


Blonde Ambition

by sephcounttheways



Category: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, ooc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:52:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 469,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sephcounttheways/pseuds/sephcounttheways
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cloud bursts out of his shell when he enrolls into the military academy. Can the power of punk rock help him get the man of his dreams? OOC</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The black comb, dripping with water, was brought up to his lips.

"Testing. One. Two. Fuckin' ten. Can you hear me?"

That was the spoken beginning of song 'Actually', number four on Mega Decision, the first and only CD released by Anal Orgasm, circa 1977, and Cloud's favorite band of all time.

Standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, soaking wet head to toe, he sang along with his favorite song while fixing his hair. He could hear his mother's warning: "This is FIF- teeeeen gil Clow. I'm putting it on the table. It is for a haircut, and a haircut only! It is not for snacks! It is not for a movie! It is not for a magazine! It is not for a new record! It is for a haircut, Jesus H. Fucking Christ Almighty!"

He was not getting a haircut.

"You're getting your I.D. picture today Clow! Sweet Baby Jesus help me if you don't get a fucking haircut I am NOT taking you to Midgar and that is a promise!"

He was not getting a haircut.

"I'll save on gas money Clow! I don't NEED to take the day off work, drive for eternity and back so you can join the FUCKING army!"

Picturing his mother's stern glare and pointed finger had made a grin spread across his mouth like a rash then and now. He was not getting that fucking haircut, sorry Sweet Baby Jesus.

Once his spikes were perfected, he hopped with the beat over to his jeans and not bothering with underwear, pulled them up over his hips. It had been exactly one hour since his "change". He had been thinking about it for weeks, planning, trying to feel out when the time was right.

He could not go to the academy as his old self. He wanted to get away from Nibelheim for a goddamn reason. Shy and sensitive. Fucking doormat? No more!

Exactly one hour ago, he had stood in front of the open bathroom door. He knew he would not come out of the bathroom the same. Now or never. Growth was going to occur. Cloud Strife was going to turn himself inside out. He was going to be everything he wanted to be and more.

A wave of unexpected grief crept up into his mind from behind and he tried to think of something to say to his old life. Something epic.

"… Goodbye."

Once he stepped over the threshold onto the tile he had stayed there for several long moments. He slowly turned on the water. He slowly took off his clothes. A life full of new possibilities was laying in front of him.  
He did the only thing he could think to do.

He masturbated. No, not just masturbated.

Not the quick, bashfully jerking hand movements in the dead of night that ended with an uncomfortable mess, a heart full of shame, and eyes full of lonely tears.

He fucked himself. Good.

He didn't even think about anything. No spank bank material was called upon in his mind. He just watched himself in the mirror leaning against the tub, groaning with no shame, hands running over his body, and urging himself on verbally. Unwittingly, Cloud had fucked himself.

After that was done with, he decided to make life ever the more worth living by putting his favorite record on full blast. Then he opened the ground level window, inviting the town and perhaps the world to hear his music and view his satisfying nudity. It was all he had to offer at that moment. His essence. He was spreading his awesome like peanut butter on toasty bread. It felt damn good.

The only person who dared to look into the window had been the neighbor, and she had simply stood up like a meerkat in her vegetable garden and looked his way, squinting and pushing up her bonnet. Cloud was sitting in the tub with a head full of shampoo at that moment. Their eyes locked and Cloud waved heartily. She quickly turned around and went inside.

He checked himself out presently. Skinny maybe. But sexily so. He was skinny in a way that Benjy, the singer from Anal Orgasm was skinny. Long limbs. Pleasant features. Adequate penis for his age. Cloud turned around to examine his ass. The jeans made it look inviting.

Coming out of the closet was apart of the plan. Cloud looked into his own eyes. The courage to not get a haircut, to be more outgoing, to look at his own naked body was there. The courage to live as a gay man? He wasn't certain he had the courage to live as a man in general. A gay man.

He was a gay, gay, gay man.

He looked at his face. Big blue puppy dog eyes. Small, unremarkable nose. The mouth was where the party was at, in his opinion. He pouted, then smiled coyly, then turned to the side a bit, flirting with himself. It was a good mouth to have. His hair framed it all in, bringing it from a little boy something to maybe something more edgy and interesting.

"I'm hot," He declared to himself.

Lifetime of Ridicule immediately and intensely argued that statement. Too small! Too skinny! Uninteresting! Boring! Stupid hair! Dumb face! Flat Ass!

Flat ass? Who had said that? He looked at it again. It was not flat!

"I may be skinny but I'm not boring! My hair isn't stupid! My face is not dumb! My ass is round and pleasing!"

Faggot!

"You called?" He said saucily to Lifetime of Ridicule and he stretched his shirt over his head. It was a plain black tight wife beater. He pulled on his shoes, retro Nikes in bright neon pink and green.

He was a sexual sight to behold. Skin tight jeans, no underwear, understated black beater, and big gay colorful shoes. His mother didn't know he owned any of this clothing. He had in fact, never worn them outside his room. This was the fucking style in Midgar. Hip! Punk! Fashion Forward! He was gonna fit in at Midgar! He was gonna smoke and, and, and get tattooed and meet other people who listened to Anal Orgasm and, and learn how to fucking fight dirty and … He gasped. Meet Sephiroth.

"Mr. General …" Cloud cooed softly, putting his fingers up to his lips, "I've never seen one of those before …"

Faaaaagooooooot… Lifetime of Ridicule was sounding farther and farther away.

Cloud laughed and pulled up the needle on the record player. "Brrrmmp!" went 'Target Boy', number eight on the best record ever.

He stepped outside, the sunshine warming his bare shoulders and bouncing off his hair. The feel of the jeans, and the general easiness of his mood had even changed his walk. Normally it was rushed, hunched, leaning forward in a hurry on an errand or just trying to get back inside somewhere safe and bully-free.

Suddenly, he had turned into a pair of hips on a set of long legs. One hand in his pocket, the other running along whatever was nearby. Flowers, a fence, a car. He leaned back in his stride, enjoying everything around him, absently wondering what to blow the fifteen gil on. It was early in the day, everyone his age was in school, everyone who wasn't was toiling at their jobs, everyone too young or too old to fall into those categories was off his radar. The town was his.

He continued his stroll past the gates of town, down the path beyond, and he could see a red tent set up. He was the only young man to sign up from this town, so he agreed to come early in the day for his ID and briefing so they could leave sooner. He hadn't expected a whole tent set up just for him.  
Excited, he increased his speed into a little trot. When he saw a young man in the tent tapping his foot in mock impatience, Cloud smiled.

He trotted quickly up to the man and saluted. A gorgeous man. The man saluted back to him with a smile.

"Name?" He asked, looking at a clip board.

"Cloud Strife."

"Let me see if I can find you. Oh yes," He made an exaggerated checkmark and turned the board around. Cloud's name was the only thing on the paper. "Where the hell are all the strapping young men in this town?"

Cloud shrugged with a goofy smile. Then his confidence altered a bit as the big gorgeous military man eyed him up and down. 'Don't do it to yourself Cloud', he thought to himself, 'you're different now.' Cloud took a moment to observe the tent. A wall to stand in front of for a picture, it was plain but with a sheet thrown over it that had the Shin-Ra logo on it. A little pop up table with a laptop and a camera on it, and two chairs. Cloud turned his gaze back to the military man, who was still smiling.

"I expected some back woodsy kid, you're pretty cool," The man said with a big grin.

Cloud, in a gesture completely alien to him, extended a hand. The other man's grin got even wider as he took it, and then shook harder than was polite, shaking Cloud around, the two laughing good naturedly.

"To business, because I want to go get drunk at some point today, I am First Class SOLDIER Zack Fair," He said, pointing to himself. "You're Cloud Strife, and I need to take your picture … For your badge," He turned and was fishing through a box noisily.

Whoa. "What class?" Cloud asked with a disbelieving shake of his head.

Zack, without turning around, held up one finger. "Uno, my friend. I can't believe it either," He said with little interest, continuing to scatter around whatever was in the box on the pop up table.

"Sir! You came all the way out here just for me! I'm so, so-" He stammered and then took in the beauty of Zack's backside as he rummaged through the box on the floor. He had dark hair escaping in every direction, rivaling Cloud's own in randomness. Hot body, but that was to be expected from a military man. Tan skin. Gorgeous features.

Cloud now looked at him in profile. A whole new list of reasons why he was beautiful emerged.  
A hunk of a man. A big hearty piece of a man. Men from Nibelheim just didn't look that good. He faintly recalled a desperate, years long crush on the town butcher. His looks were nothing special at all, but the way he chopped steak really turned Cloud on. That's what Nibelheim had to offer.

"Here it is!" Zack held up a USB cord, and plugged it triumphantly into the camera, "Don't worry about all that. One on one get-to-know-you's are so much better than a crowd anyways. Go stand there." He pointed to the wall.  
Cloud went to it. "So uh, like. What do I do?"

"Say cheese!"

"But it's like a … Thing. Do I need to keep my face neutral?"

"You're supposed to smile. For the birdie?" He lifted the camera up to his eye with a ridiculous look smeared across his face. Cloud laughed. Flash!

"You can't look until I print it." Zack stated in a dead serious voice. Cloud stood a little more at attention at the sound of it and waited. In a moment a card popped out of the back of the laptop with a 'moo' sound effect.  
Zack hooked a lanyard onto it and gave it to him. Cloud was smiling handsomely and scrunching his shoulders and with a slight tilt of his head to the side, dimples on show and laughter in his eyes. It was an incredible picture of himself. "Pretty cute, Cloud!" Zack laughed.

Cloud was about to agree when he noticed Zack's badge hooked to the waist of his pants. His face, a smile seeming so natural for it, was stone cold serious.

Cloud's jaw dropped. Zack leaned in, "Easy way to tell first years!" he grinned with a clap to the side of Cloud's neck.

"Son of a … Zaaaack make another one!" Cloud whined.

Zack pointed to a sign that he himself had taken the time to hang. 'ONLY ONE BADGE ISSUED PER CADET, PER YEAR.'  
Cloud, in his old life would have pouted, or walked away, or made a fuss. Instead, keeping his eyes on Zack's, put the badge around his neck, "I look good anyways!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud trotted back into town with a happy smile on his face. A fucking friend. He made a friend out of a first class SOLDIER. The hours flew by and the talked well beyond the briefing, Zack promising to find Cloud when school started and get him into some of the weekend seminars he himself taught.  
A friend. A cute friend!

He hooked into the town store, fifteen gil still burning a hole in his back pocket. Most of his punk or electro records had to be ordered online. They never had anything but CDs of country or folk or a limited selection of blah. He went down the magazine aisle, hoping for something that wouldn't tease him with news of concerts or new video games. In two weeks time he wouldn't have room in his life for that anymore. He popped the gum Zack had given to him.

Then his eyes roamed across a vision of loveliness. There, in high resolution, full front cover, was a close up of … He seized the magazine and clutched it face down into his chest. He didn't want to inspect it here. Home. In bed. Naked, horny, and at his own leisure.

Then a voice of reason and responsibility broke into his spanky plans. There on the briefing list of things to bring … The option of an Mp3 player. He thought of Anal Orgasm. Then he pictured his inches thick binder of CDs and records. No option to haul off a record player or a stereo. Mp3 player to hold all that music … Not so cheap.  
Could he handle years … Years with no music? To save up that money would take years. He'd be spending his allowance on fresh socks and toothpaste … Not records or retro old school Nikes or the usual shit. Mom was already going to be pissed he hadn't gotten a haircut. But fifteen perfectly spend able gil blown on spank bank? Then he recalled his hazy mind's eye recollection of the cover of this erotic TimeWeek magazine, not daring to look until he wasn't wearing such tight jeans.

'This TimeWeek. This issue I must own,' Cloud told himself.

He took it to the counter, not looking when Mr. Pesely flipped it right side up to scan the barcode and slip it into a bag, "Catching up on the news, Cloud?" he asked with no real interest.  
"Yessir. When I get to the military I'd like to have an opinion on ya know. Shit that's going down."  
"Good boy." He said without skipping a beat.

"This too please," Cloud said suddenly, enticed by the candy bars.

"Fourteen gil."

One stupid gil left … "Another?"

"Fifteen gil."

Cloud spat out the gum and started chewing on a candy bar, walking home to wallow, too distressed about money to think about his sexy new purchase. Fucking Catch 22! Desirable things must be owned! That's why they're put on this planet! To entice young boys with some pocket money ...

"Hahahahaha! Look at the faggot!"

Cloud realized he was being talked about, "Did you just call me a faggot?"

Ronny. Ugly, Ronny. Ugly, fat, idiot face Ronny. His stupid crooked teeth. His flat hair. Ronny, the usual sack of shit and his ever changing group of nameless little kid followers sat a little lower than Cloud in a ditch, apparently thinking about forming a league, because all were holding baseball bats.

"Yeah. You see any other faggots around here? Hahahahahaha!" His fat face jiggled as he laughed.

Cloud thought about that while chewing into his candy bar again, "You know I'm going to the military soon right?"

"Yeah. You think you're special or something?"

"No, no. See, I hear the military is just chock full of faggots … And since you have such a nice, fat ass, maybe I could practice on you before I go?" Cloud chewed on his candy bar sweetly.

Ronny was speechless. "… No!" He spat out dumbly. The smaller kids looked at each other muttering. They knew words. Words like 'haha' and 'faggot'. And 'haha' plus 'faggot' usually equaled more 'haha'. But all those words were said and there was no more 'haha'. It was a mathematical mystery that none of them felt like solving.

"Stay out of my sexy face, Ronny. I'll kick your ass up and down this street. You know I can do it or else you wouldn't be the preschool teacher." Cloud saluted with his candy bar. He was done with this scene, for good.

He was ready for a soon to be pleasure fest extravaganza scene. Buyer's remorse long gone, he made his way home.  
High School apparently was out. Ronny lurking around meant nothing, he rarely attended. But an all too familiar form was walking in his direction. Every inch of her had been studied way more that any textbook he ever owned.

She was all developing tits and shortening skirts and knee socks and long legs and high heels. All innocence and colorful bra straps and exposed bellybuttons and giggles. It was enough to make a gay man hurt. Shouldn't he want this? Didn't he used to? Did he really ever?

She stopped with a smile, "Hey. Weird without you in class."

Weird? "Don't pretend you miss me, bitch," He said with a genuine smile.

Her eyes crawled all over his body as if she never knew he had one before, "When do you leave?"

"Little less than two weeks," He said. "You want?" He offered her one of his candy bars.

"Thanks …" She said, her hands lingering over his. Oh GOD. "Cloud, I'll miss you."

His blood boiled at that. NOW she missed him? A breeze passed over him, hitting his new purchase into the back of his leg as if it was an anxious lover telling him to wrap it up, "Don't worry Tifa. Your tits will be here soon. I'm sure you'll find some lucky guy to knock them around. Enjoy the candy bar."

His core shook violently as he tried his best to walk away coolly and not laugh or beg for forgiveness. He had written off two of the major players in his childhood in less than five minutes. Un-FUCKING-believable, as his mother would often say. His stride turned into a jog when he neared his house, busting through the door before he accidentally told his elderly neighbors to hurry up and croak.

"Un-FUCKING-believable!"

Cloud shrank back immediately. School's out. That means Mom is indeed home.

"No haircut. Oh big surprise! A magazine!" she ripped it from his casual grip and pulled it out, eyes instantly wide with disbelief at the title.

"I just … Wanted to get caught up in current affairs, mom," She was looking at the cover for longer than necessary than looked at Cloud.

"You look … Really good," She sighed. "But where the fuck did those shoes crawl out from?" She put the magazine back into the bag of candy bar wrappers and handed it back to him.

A moment passed. In that moment Cloud visibly grew before her eyes. She knew she was speaking to a young man. Not a little boy, not anymore.

"Lemme see your picture. Oh CLOUD! Christ you look so cute!" She laughed gleefully. "I'm calling up fucking Shin-Ra and ordering some 8x10's!"

Cloud smiled pulling the ID back and looked into her almost identical eyes. Softly he said, "When my second year comes around … I'll send it to you. I'll need a new one."

Another moment passed, "Well mister lemme see your list. Put me … Put me in the fucking poor house with this military SHIT," She managed to say very softly and lovingly.

"Hey mom look! It says I can brinnnnng …" He tapped the list three times, "An Mp3 playerrrrrr …" He wiggled his fingers in her face, trying to hypnotize her.

"Of course you can bring one!" She answered mock enthusiastically, "But get a job and earn quick before you go."

His soul left his body. Bashful for asking, he started rattling off the other things on the list. Toothbrush, underwear, socks, uniforms are provided.

She looked him up and down. "How many gigs you think you'll need?"

Planning and talking and eating dinner and trying every second of that time to work his way up to his room, the night dwindled on. Grateful for the miracle of motherly guilt and not wanting her to change her mind about the Mp3 player, he decided to swing it into full on son mode. Dishes were done. Feet were massaged. Kisses were plentiful.

All the while a little plastic bag kept saying THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Thanks for buying me and keeping me cooped up in this bag! Thanks for not letting me pleasure you, Cloud! Thanks a fucking lot for offering to do the dishes!

The clock struck eight PM. Cloud yawned heartily and his mother took notice of the odd action, "You have to get up early for anything tomorrow, Clow?"

He rubbed his eyes, "No. But I got up early today for the orientation thing. Kinda done in."

"Why don't you stay and watch Real World: Costa Del Sol with me?" The look on Cloud's face was enough to make her laugh the way only a smoker can, "Go upstairs you little bastard! Go read something! Listen to music! Get out of my face!"

He grabbed the THANK YOU THANK YOU bag and was gone in an instant. But then returned to plant a firm kiss on her cheek, then disappeared up the stairs once more.

He closed his door and the jeans were peeled off and replaced by drawstring gray sweats. Beater came off too. He laid down in bed, prepared to withdraw the magazine.

But then he moved more pillows behind him, and snuggled down farther into his comforter. He caught his reflection in the mirror and he had a shit-eating grin on his face. The anticipation was delicious.

He took out the magazine, facing away from him. Then, ever so slowly, turned it around. A sound escaped his throat as he let his eyes drink in the vision.

Every centimeter of the picture was observed in reverence.

His hair. It shined of it's own accord, not playing by the rules of the lighting in the rest of the picture. Every strand was visible, from the perfectly white root to where it was cut off by the cruelty of the picture's border. Some strands were dark silver, some a more creamy white … But all looked touchably soft. It looked like it smelled good. 'Oh Sephiroth, what shampoo do you use?'

His eyes. The eyebrows were also white, and Cloud happily noticed, there was no unsightly unibrow. They were almost dainty in and of themselves, a feminine touch to the man's face. His eyelashes were incredibly long and full, jet black despite the silvery hair. There was a heavy shadow from his lashes on his eyes themselves, darkening them and making then all the more intense. The green they were did not exist. The color was too beautiful, too perfect to come from nature. Cloud looked at them for a long time, making out the faint details of small flecks of yellow and dark blue around the pupil. The mystery of his pupils themselves finally solved to Cloud. A cat's. A shiver ran down his arms at the thought. A cat's. 'Oh Sephiroth, how did you get such sexpot eyes?'

His nose. Pleasant, a gentle slope. Masculine, but not overly so. Cloud was relieved to see that, unlike some of the men in Nibelheim, his nose had almost no visible pores. The unwanted recollection of one of his past teachers emerged, whose nose almost resembled a strawberry. 'Oh Sephiroth, do you use pore minimizing facial scrub?'

Looking even more closely, Cloud's heart delighted in the detail of a very small indent on the underside of Sephiroth's nose.

"That's the spot..." Cloud whispered out loud, touching it lightly.

"What spot?" Sephiroth asked, scrunching his nose.

'That's the spot where I'll kiss you when you're grumpy. It'll make you smile every single time,' Cloud thought.

"Oh," Sephiroth replied, hiking one white eyebrow gently.

His mouth. It was wide and soft and – Gulp, sensual. His bottom lip was full, his top lip a little less, both perhaps a shade or two darker than his skin, plus a faint black cherry tint. The indents in the corners of his mouth were deep, and lilting up slightly into a demure smile. The picture teased Cloud by showing the perfect texture of his lips in detail. The skin just slightly cracked in the middle of his bottom lip. Perfectly kissable. 'Oh Sephiroth-'

"Shut up and kiss me," He interrupted gruffly.

Cloud touched his lips to the cover of TimeWeek, covering up the General's. It was wholly unsatisfying. He closed his eyes and opted for his hand, the softness of his own skin – Er, Sephiroth's lips much better than glossy paper.

He kissed Sephiroth deeply, gently flicking his tongue against his hand. He ran a hand up into his hair, the softness good to the touch, and pulled slightly.

Sephiroth ran his hands down Cloud's chest, fingers tickling over his belly button before teasingly running his fingers across the waistband of his pants.

Looking into Cloud's eyes, Sephiroth tugged gently, easing the drawstring apart, then pulled roughly up on the pants, loosening them up.

"Cloud, I want to suck your cock," The General announced.

Cloud sputtered out loud. What do you say to that?

"… Don't say anything," Sephiroth advised, pushing against Cloud's chest, lying him down farther.

Sephiroth tugged the pants down below his hips and ran his hands over the top of Cloud's thighs.

"Laundry?" Sephiroth asked breathily, flicking out his tongue momentarily to barely touch the end of Cloud's proud little erection.

'Huh?'

"Laundry call!" Sephiroth said loudly.

Cloud's eyes jerked open and he froze. He took the magazine off of his face and looked around in a lusty daze. The magazine tumbled clumsily to the floor. His mother looked at the scene with pure innocence. She had been busting in on him during his private time too many instances to count. Perhaps she was sparing him humiliation, but she never seemed to grasp what was going on.

"Did you fall asleep reading?" His mother asked, picking up bits of laundry from the lamp, the floor, and under the bed.

"I must have," Cloud said, knees up, frozen still under his comforter.

Both of their eyes drifted down to where the magazine lay. Cloud covered his face in his hands.  
It had fallen open to a page with Senator Ona Hellenson on it. Her pasty, fat face staring up with a disapproving glare. She was sitting on a teacher's desk with a ruler in her hands, the headline read "Senator moves for stricter discipline in public schools".

Cloud groaned. His mother snickered.

She knew.

She knew every fucking time.

A/N

Chapter Image can be found here! - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=120#/d1co9li

1- Anal Orgasm was made up by me. If there is some punk band on this Earth that goes by that name, I bow to them. The songs and CD title are also made up. This is "Cloud's band". I really didn't want to use an actual band because well … Feelings gets mixed up then. This way, when you're reading, just think of the most ass kicking music you know. Do it. Picture some dusty little record, completely unknown … That pumps out exactly what you want to hear. That is Anal Orgasm.

2- Everyone is way way OC. Just roll with it. It'll feel good.

3- TimeWeek, made up. You knew that. So is Ona Hellenson, bless her fake little made up soul.

4- Cloud has an overactive imagination. It's only going to get worse (funnier).

5- I don't hate Tifa, Lord bless her titties.


	2. A Queer in Uniform

Fuck Rust was an all female punk band comprised of former Honeybee Inn prostitutes. Cloud found the record when he was eleven years old, going through his mom's old collection.

"I don't wanna make you straight, QUEERBAIT! I love your fucking pretty face, QUEERBAIT!" Cloud shouted over the running shower water along with Lorna Rust, the lead singer, and his muse.

Knuckles rapped on the door, "Language, Clow!"

Lorna Rust, the image from the record cover, a vision of pure hellfire fury. Tight, dirty jeans, a neon yellow shirt ripped to shreds, barely containing her tits, thigh high pink boots with white laces. Her face was enraged, long bleached hair everywhere.

Cloud pictured himself at the academy, perhaps just having been in a terribly arousing death match. He swayed his hips away from the decimation, he could see Sephiroth sitting in the stands watching, lips parted, huge erection straining the very seams of his ever present leather pants. Cloud was gutter dirty. Disheveled, shirt ripped apart just like Lorna's, chest heaving, blood dripping from his mouth, same stance as her, blonde headed schizophrenic.

To be as sexy as Lorna! Of course, with many of the members of Fuck Rust, she had long since splashed back into the life stream. But her voice drove Cloud insane, she had been one fucking divinely pissed off woman.

Cloud turned off the water and kept singing, opting to 'beep' loudly when a dirty word skidded by, "I wanna BEEP your hot little BEEP, QUEERBAIT!"

"Better!" He heard faintly over the dryer.

Today was going to be an interesting one. First, to the post office to pick up his package from the military academy, his school uniforms had arrived. The uniforms were of grave importance. Then to the mall to get what he needed off his list. Cloud leaned into the mirror and bumped his forehead heavily against his reflection. Today would be good.

And tomorrow morning, they left for Midgar. His pupils widened. Tomorrow he would be sleeping in a room with someone he had never met before. When the sun rose tomorrow, this would not be home anymore.

"Is this right?" Cloud sighed to nobody. In response, he quickly kissed his own face. Loving himself a little bit had greatly increased his self-esteem.

That, and since the day of the briefing he had put his secret wardrobe into heavy rotation. There was no reason to hide anything anymore. Today he had on a shirt with Lorna on it that said simply, queer bait. He put on his now favorite jeans and bottomed it off with blue and yellow KangaROOs. He tried to drum up some of his now usual energy to calm his own nerves but … The anxiety in his eyes was plain to see.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Don't open it! I wanna look first!" Cloud roared every time his mom made any motions toward the backseat. She stuck him with the task of driving them to the mall, as she reveled in the chance to not have to drive, and of course any opportunity to torture him. The package was huge, taking up half of the backseat. Imprinted was the logo of Shin-Ra.

"Just a peek!"

"I said NOOO!" He threw his head back and shrieked at the top of his lungs, leaning on the horn to emphasize.

She chuckled, remembering the origins of this strange Cloud phenomenon. That first Christmas morning where Cloud was finally big enough to open his own presents. Tiny baby blonde, sitting there in his blue footsy pajamas, he ripped a small hole in the bright paper. He peeked into it, opening it ever so gently so only he could see what it was first before finally tearing off the paper. 'Why do you do that?' She had innocently asked the toddler. 'I see forst,' was his only explanation.

"So I have to sit in goddamn anticipation all afternoon?"

"YES! I see first, for fuck's sake!" Cloud crowed.

Some things never changed, they both realized simultaneously. One thing that was never going to change was the fact that they were both complete bitches. The mall was quickly and efficiently located, decent parking was obtained, and they made their entrance.

"Do you know where you wanna get this stuff at?" She asked him.

"Mm," Was his reply. From his peripheral he had noticed a gaggle of girls eyeing him. It was true what they say: Decide you're gay and you're suddenly hot property.

Tifa had been practically pawing down his front door since he was a little bit crass with her. Respect the woman and get nothin'. Tell her to fuck off and she's in love. There was still a primordial male urge to protect, to befriend. But it was an open and shut case, he knew what he wanted. Needed.

He needed a man so damn badly. He let his mind drift to Sephiroth. A man. A chest to lean against, a heartbeat to listen to, arms to keep him secure, a warm mouth to kiss. What store sold those?

"Well I think we can get almost everything here," His mom was yammering, pulling him into a department store. "You need some sweats. Socks. All that shit."

Cloud glanced over the men's selection of workout gear. Gray, black, navy, and white was the rainbow available.  
His eyes tiptoed over to the woman's side of the department. Stripes, colors, and patterns splashed about. He turned his attention to what his mother was holding up, a gray pair of sweats that looked like the apocalypse.

Being a fashionista for the past two weeks, he couldn't bear the thought of gray, linty sweatpants on his body. "I want blue," He stated.

"Here's blue," she held up a dark navy pair.

"Bright blue," He stated again, looking at a pair of loose fitting, softer sweats across the way. "Those."

Her eyes followed his pointed finger, "Oh those are for girls baby. These are still blue."

"But I'm still pretty small. They'd fit fine," He said picking them up, holding them against his hips.

She looked at him for a moment, "Well try them on. Do you like the bright green, too?"

He made his way into the dressing room, flushing furiously. He could deal with hideous, unfashionable, ass drowning sweatpants … He really only needed these as lounging clothes or maybe for working out in the gym.  
He looked at himself in the dressing room mirror shaking his head. He looked like he was going to pilates class, not to train for war. He was about to take them off when he caught a glimpse of his ass. He turned around, delighted.

Three in both colors. Check.

White ankle socks? No. Knee high tube socks with red stripes. Check.

Baggy plain t-shirts? No. Extra small wife beaters. Check.

"I think that's just about everything I need from here, mom," He said with a smile. Dying on the battlefield, his pants would be tight and his ass would look amazing.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

"Hook it into the drug store before we go home, Clow. Your job in this store is this: Whatever I put into the cart you put in three more. No matter what it is. Three more."

They walked up and down the aisles, filling the cart with toiletries Cloud might or might not need. Toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, conditioner, face scrub, body wash, hand sanitizer.

"Motion sickness medication," She pointed out.

Tweezers, chap stick, deodorant, jock straps.

"Flintstones vitamins," Cloud requested.

They headed down the feminine hygiene aisle. Cloud averted his eyes from everything in general. They stopped, and he looked up.

"Condoms," She stated with a long breath of air.

"What!" Cloud balked.

She picked up a box of one hundred and scanned the label. Seeming satisfied she dropped it into the cart, and looked at him.

"Three more boxes," She said.

Cloud gasped," What the fuck am I going to do with four hundred condoms?" He immediately realized his wording and covered his face with his hand.

Not caring, she selected a very large bottle of lubricant. She dropped it into the cart also.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Cloud. Now listen to me," She began quietly, more serious than Cloud had seen her in a very long time. "These are things that men … Need. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

Their eyes searched each other's for several heartbeats. Cloud felt extremely young. He shouldn't have been wearing what he was. He should have been in a soccer uniform. It should be his bedtime already.

Shaking his head he put three more of each item in the cart then wrapped his long fingers through the gaps in the metal. Waiting. For her to say anything.

She sighed, "Just – whatever happens. Make sure to use both of those things. Don't let … Whoever. Don't let them tell you that you won't need either of them. I don't want you to be hurt," she swallowed. "This will help."

Cloud's breath hitched and tears sprung from his eyes suddenly and violently.

"Don't cry. You need to know this," She moved forward and wrapped her son in a hug. She kissed his forehead and he buried his head into her neck, letting himself cry for a few moments before pulling back. She drummed her fingers on the side of the cart, "You're wearing the queer bait shirt, not me."

Cloud laughed loudly, wiping at his face.

"Do you know … Everything? How it works?" She asked gently.

"I think so," Cloud nodded and sniffed, still wiping his eyes.

They stood there looking at each other.

"Surprise, I'm gay."

They roared into laughter.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"I'll do it alone!" Cloud insisted as he lugged the large box up the stairs.

Successfully getting it into his room and onto his bed, his mom popped her head in, holding scissors," Want me to cut it?"

"OUT!" Slam.

He ran his fingers over the logo.

"What's that?" Sephiroth asked from his roost, taped to Cloud's wall.

"School uniforms," Cloud said slowly.

"Okay," Sephiroth consented.

There was a forum online for new students to chat. Fuck around. Whatever. Cloud just wanted to know what the uniform looked like. There were some complaints, but no pictures or worthwhile descriptions.

He tore into the box. A paper detailed the contents:

Fall Classroom - five shirts short sleeve, five shirts long sleeve, five vests, five pants, two ties.

Fall Field – five fatigues, two boots.

He put the paper down and unwrapped the first thing he felt.

The shirt was white, red buttons lining up to the collar, sleeves ending mid upper arm. The sleeves could be unbuttoned and rolled down to the elbow. The button that held it in place was also red. There was a very pristine embroidered red logo on the left breast pocket. It was a crest, part Shin-Ra logo, part SOLDIER logo, and something else. Then his eyes rolled in pleasure. They had included Masamune on the school crest. His fingers touched every dip and plane of the embroidery, special focus to feel the length of the tiny image of the sword.

Next thing unwrapped were the sweater vests, they were v-neck, black with red and white rings around the sleeves and neck. Over the left breast was the ever present crest, but instead of the red embroiderment, it was a color screened image.

He delved into the next. The long sleeve shirt was like the short sleeve but no crest on the pocket, probably because it was meant to be worn under the vest. Initially disappointed with the plainness, he was delighted to find that there were very tiny crests embroidered on the cuffs.

Next unwrapped, in a smaller bag, were the ties. They were simply red, with diagonal black and white stripes.  
Best for last, the pants. Cloud flushed with anxiety. He ordered them a size too small on purpose. He hoped the results were worth it. He ripped open the back with his eyes closed. Blindly, he took off his pants and Sephiroth cat called. He then pulled on the pressed new uniform pants. Snug. He buttoned and zipped them up without very much difficulty at all. He opened his eyes. Low and tight. Cloud picked up a tie and spun it around in the air.

Then he noticed something. He turned around and laughed wickedly. On his left back pocket was again, the crest. He closed his eyes and imagined what his ass was going to look like swaying down the hallway, the school crest moving gently back and forth.

He pulled off his Lorna shirt and pulled on the white short sleeve shirt. He buttoned it all the way up, then flung the tie around his neck, pushed it up into place.

The boys were allowed to wear casual shoes in the classroom, academy preferring to keep the boots for outside purposes. Cloud had gotten, by miracle of miracles, red converses. He slipped them on, and looked at the complete picture in his mirror.

He thought to what the other boys were saying about the uniform, 'Dorky! Ugh, I hate uniforms! I wish we could just wear fatigues!'

Morons! The uniform was a wet dream. The buttons screamed to be ripped open, tie literally designed to trap wrists against bedposts.

But most of all, most of all, Cloud had to stand out. Had to. He had to be cute, sexy, desirable. He had to catch the attention of …

"Sephiroth?" Cloud called softly.

"Hnnnnnn?" he answered.

"The first time you fuck me. I want to be wearing this."

"Okie Dokie."

Then Cloud remembered that there was more in the box. He was much less interested in the remaining contents. The boots were black combat boots. The fatigues were a pleasant surprise. Although they were simply baggy black cargo pants, there was also the red crest on the left back pocket. He imagined crawling on his belly through the mud in them.

It was the little details that Cloud liked best.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

When Ms. Strife became pregnant, Cloud's father added the second story to the house, expecting him to be the first of a litter. So the walls upstairs, being a quick addition, were much thinner than the walls downstairs.  
And Cloud, being an only child with no friends, had no idea they were so thin. When in her room, Ms. Strife was usually reading, sleeping, or just being generally silent. Even though he was a quiet person, he opened up like a flower when alone in his room.

He really didn't know how butt fucking thin the walls upstairs really were. He didn't know that every single syllable he said while in his room was completely audible to his mother.

Sephiroth.

Ms. Strife mulled over that word for months. Maybe longer. Trying to figure out how it was spelled, what it meant.

A band? A lyric in a song?

The cadence by which it was spoken led her to believe that it was a name. But whose?

At first she thought Cloud, being only slightly muffled, was saying 'Save' something or other. Save Ross? Save Rose? Save Wrought?"

No, not 'save'. 'Seph'.

She made a habit out of listening to him closely when he spoke, especially about music or video games, hoping the word would pop up and she could finally get an explanation to why that word was constantly said.

Sometimes it was uttered in a sexual way. Sometimes it was just said as if Cloud was talking to someone. Sometimes giggled. Sometimes groaned. Rarely, but often enough, it was said over and over, choked out repeatedly through heart breaking sobs until Cloud finally calmed down and began to softly snore.

Her child, largely a mystery to her throughout their relationship as mother and son, was full of secrets. She should have told him how well she could hear him but – she delighted in his humor. His imaginings. His thoughts spoken out to nobody. His sweet voice singing.

Sephiroth.

A large change occurred in her son since he signed up for the academy. He was suddenly full of light. She saw with her own eyes the person who was trapped in the upstairs bedroom, before heard only through the walls. He was a beautiful person. A sexual being. She was proud to see Cloud come into his own.

When she saw Cloud that afternoon, taking the magazine from him, the mystery was solved.

There was an attractive man. The caption read, "Sephiroth – General of the Shin-Ra army speaks".

It slightly horrified her. Hence the condom purchase and mini lecture.

She knew all about Cloud's sexuality for a very long time. But the things he mentioned alone weren't real. He adored Benjy. He spoke about men to Lorna Rust. He would drool over a man's picture in a magazine or talk to nobody about what he would hope his future lovers would be like.

Imaginings. Fantasies.

But Sephiroth was a very, very real man. And her son signed up for his army.

Finally, a face with the name. And if she knew anything about that person, the one she listened to nightly, he would get what he wanted.

'Sephiroth', Cloud had said moments ago, sending a red alert to his mother's ears. There was a giggle on his voice. A private tone. 'The first time you fuck me. I want to be wearing this.'

Ms. Strife sighed. Oh yes, Cloud would get his man. She knew he would.

"Hey," Cloud appeared in the doorway, arms outstretched like a young boy. He looked incredibly handsome. It had nothing to do with what he was wearing. He was about to embark on something more important than being in the military.

Ms. Strife didn't say anything. She was making a wish.

'Please give Cloud the courage to march directly up to that son of a bitch. Let Cloud steal the beating heart right out of his fucking chest. Let Cloud wipe the smug smile right off of that handsome face. Let Cloud break through every barrier. Wrap that man around Cloud's little finger.'

She wanted to see General Sephiroth, on her doorstep, with Cloud leading him by the hand to meet his mother.

A/N

Chapter Image can be found here! - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=120#/d1co9nb

1- Pumped this out right away. Had to write it. Ya know how it is. Fuck Rust, Lorna, Queer Bait, all that made up. I might mention actual music in later chapters, if/when I do it will be stated.

2- The uniform. I, not unlike Cloud, love clothes. So I just wanted to whip up something sexy for him to wear. So yes, from here on in, if you like to get the picture like I do, that will be what he wears.

3- Lots of talk from Mrs. Strife, I know. Next chapter is really the "beginning" of this story. I just wanted to touch on her relationship with Cloud before getting down to the nitty gritty.

4- You might get the feeling that this is a "feel good" fic. You would be correct.

5- Thanks for the reviews! I appreciate it, really.


	3. School Boys

Razor Phase was NOT techno.

Razor Phase fell into the specific category of hellectro. Roger Say was the entire band. His electronic beats were purely sex driven, and he was a man of few words. When he did sing, his deep, raspy voice was like a musical seduction, muttering of a deep longing for some unreachable object of his desire.

Cloud pushed back silver hair and spoke those desperate words against an ear, brushing his eyelashes along a cheekbone, working his fingers under a heavy leather collar, hands digging into strong shoulders … And then …

And then he woke up with a snort as his ear bud was plucked out like a daisy.

"If you think you get to sleep while I stay up and drive, you've got another thing coming you little bastard."

Cloud sat up more in the seat and turned his newly beloved Mp3 player off. It was bright yellow, and contained his very soul. There, in the tiny device, just waiting to rock his face off, were exactly five thousand songs. The techy boy down the street had a cool turntable that made Mp3's out of his records. That had been a two day long endeavor, and in the end sacrifices had to be made, as techy boy was becoming extremely agitated at having to listen to Cloud's music for hours on end. He wondered how many swear words were floating through the wiring, waiting to scream into his eardrums like a heart attack.

Yawning, he felt under his seat for the car CD case. These were mostly his mother's, "What are you in the mood for?"

"Fucking silence."

Cloud drummed his fingers softly and looked at her. She was being quite the megabitch. Getting up early, bitchy. Having to drive, bitchy bitchy. Seeing her son off to military school, bitchy bitchy bitchy. He could remedy one of those at least, "Want me to drive?"

"No."

Cloud sighed, and took a sip of his long forgotten about orange juice. He rejected it, swooshing it back down the straw from whence it came. Fast food orange juice somehow had the uncanny ability to become watered down. A wicked notion slithered into his mind.

It was simply terrible, and he would certainly be going to hell if he followed through. But more than not burning in hell, he wanted to make this ride both tolerable and memorable.

He sucked up the disgusting juice, held it in the straw with his finger, and spit it onto the side of his mother's face.

The car swerved to a stop beside the highway and Cloud shrieked with laughter as his mother screamed profanities and furiously slapped the top of his head. He exited the vehicle and jogged with a smile to her window, and tapped. She got out and switched with him.

"Do we have at least some fucking napkins?" She muttered, searching through the fast food bag.

They sat in a comfortable silence for a long time. Cloud thought she had fallen asleep when suddenly, she spoke.  
"What's the game plan?"

He smiled at the invitation to conversation," Well, it's a three year school. But I think I'm going to try and do the SOLDIER exam end of my second year. I'd still have to finish the third but I'd get to get some experience and shit. Umm … Bulk up as much as I can in the meantime. I wanna be ripped. Protein and-"

"No, the other game plan," She reinstated.

"Ohh. I'm gonna write you at least every two weeks. I'll call you every holiday and every time something interesting happens, take plenty of pictures, and come home for two weeks in the summertime."

"I know that game plan, I'm the one that made it up. I mean the other, other game plan."

Cloud shot her a questioning look. She smiled, "What happens today?"

"Ohhhh. I go for my room and locker assignments, then I go for my schedule. Then I dump my stuff off in my room and then there's a big orientation seminar thing. Then tomorrow the shit hits the fan," He smiled.

"'Big orientation seminar thing'? Who's going to be there?"

"Ohhhhhh … Sorry mom, no parents allowed, you have to drop me off at the gate. You know."

She sighed heavily and asked in plain English, "Who is going to be speaking at the seminar?"

He kept his eyes on the road, "I'm not sure. The headmaster Teachers?"

"The General."

The car swerved a bit and Cloud coughed, "Oh I'm not so sure. He's the General of the Army but um, he's probably not going to be at the school …"

"Yes he is."

Cloud's kept his head facing forward but his eyes flicked to look at her briefly, "He is?"

"Don't you fucking read? In the orientation letter it said that the seminar speakers were your headmaster, your head drill sergeant, some other assholes … And your general." She smiled.

Cloud's face became a red lava lamp of glee and embarrassment. But he kept the cool in his voice, "Oh. That's nice."

"And since you're apparently fucking illiterate, I'll tell you this: There is a question and answer forum with him."

Cloud's head snapped in her direction. She continued, "There are only one hundred new boys enrolled this fall. Since it's such a small class, every boy has the chance to ask the General a question."

Cloud kept on looking in her direction, oblivious now to the task of driving. She put a hand on the wheel and kept her eyes on the road for him, "So now I ask you. What is the game plan?"

Cloud had been rendered speechless. Shooing her hand off the wheel he gripped it tight and looked back to the road.

"You really didn't know?"

"I had no goddamn idea," He admitted gravely.

She snickered, "Well, you only have a couple more hours to think about it."

Cloud had put on a cute outfit. His black school vest with nothing underneath, a red belt, and tight jeans with a gaping hole in the back of one knee. That was cute. That was NOT first impression to the General cute, however. But what was? A birthday suit and a smile?

The very thought that he could run into Sephiroth in the hallway unleashed a monsoon of butterflies throughout his anatomy. He could see that man drinking from a water fountain? Helping someone find their locker? He could spot that gorgeous hair from behind in a crowd?

Then another thought. He didn't know what Sephiroth sounded like. He had never heard his voice. Always pictures in newspapers, or perhaps a glimpse on the news. He would be thoroughly convinced Sephiroth was only a beautiful statue, if not for spotting him at a press conference they were watching at school. Cloud remembered becoming painfully swollen beneath his desk when he finally noticed who was on the screen. Sephiroth was merely standing in the background in a line of military bigwigs, arms crossed, looking at the speaker with a neutral face.

Cloud had been transfixed by the small movements of Sephiroth's eyes, the barely noticeable up and down of his leather strapped chest as he breathed, involuntary twitches of his fingers. Without warning, he had gracefully leaned down to say something to the shorter man standing beside him. Cloud still remembered the way his hair spilled over one shoulder as he did it, and the way his jaw and throat moved as he murmured. Then he stood up straight and kept stone still for the rest of the time, only bringing his hands together a few times to clap demurely when the speaker was finished. The men in line began talking to each other, and Sephiroth turned his attention and smiled handsomely to someone when the television had been flipped off.

Staring at the black screen, wanting more … It was the moment that cemented Cloud's desire.

He knew that Sephiroth was twenty five years old, but not his mannerisms. He knew Sephiroth was beautiful. But nothing about the man.

And that made him feel very … Stupid.

To think of himself … Touching that man. A boy of merely sixteen, putting his clean, baby skinned hands on that experienced, hard working, strong … Hero. It was a thought that humiliated him to the core. To think he had actually believed he could win a man like that. To seduce him? He glanced down at his thin, hairless arms, leading to bony wrists, and two spidery, long fingered hands holding the steering wheel.

He was a lonely, little, virgin, faggot from buttfuck nowhere! Less than nothing to a powerful man like Sephiroth. A man like that could have anything he desired. He was probably … Straight. Covered in women day and night. He probably wanted a woman like Lorna Rust … Something Cloud could never be without advanced medical help.  
"Whatever you're thinking right now, knock it the fuck off," Came his mother's voice piercing through into his self induced misery.

"I'm not thinking about anything," He weakly defended, not daring to touch a palm to his badly watering eyes.  
Only one tear fell, and it was on the side of his face facing away from his mother. He scratched his cheek casually, wiping it away in the process.

His eyes flicked to her several times, "What do I do?" He finally asked.

"Think of something really cute to say," She advised seriously.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Watch the road!" His mother cawed, Cloud's eyes ignoring traffic once again to take in the sights of Midgar.

The exit from the highway put them smack in the center of slumsville downtown. His mother grimaced, but Cloud was already remembering names of places he would go. The Vomitorium, a famous club constantly hosting bands he liked. Pimp Hand Burger Stand. Cherry's Tattoos and Scarification. Dirty Rubbers – a clothing store that looked like they didn't sell anything with the crotch sewn closed. A boy was walking out of the store … He was wearing … Not much …

"Pull over if you can't drive right!"

And the boys in Midgar were already driving Cloud crazy. He had never seen such an array of attractive body parts. He was used to red headed, burly mountain men. He practically fogged up the window while at a stoplight two tall, beautiful boys looking like they were about to go to Sex Town were waiting to cross. The hotter one winked when he noticed Cloud's glazed over stare. Green light. Too bad.

"No fucking way!" Cloud cried with a swerve of the wheel, "It's the Honeybee Inn!"

"Oh Christ …"

He immediately rolled down the window and bellowed, "LORNAAA!"

Somebody somewhere screamed something back. Somewhere else glass shattered. A cat meowed. There was the distinct sound of a garbage truck. At four in the afternoon? Cloud loved the slums.

Through a series of twists and turns, crossing bridges between sectors and driving up an incredibly steep overpass, passing by smelly reactors, they arrived on the top plate. Suddenly there were less exposed hipbones and more business suits. Not so much tattooed arms as briefcases. Homeless sidewalk trumpet players opted for tree lined streets.

A few more turns. And there it was. Shin-Ra Military Academy.

It was a massive, black five story building lined with towering windows. There were three huge, connected staircases that led up to the monstrous building. Hung for today was a two story wide red banner saying "Welcome Back Boys". Behind the main building was a large area of land, Cloud could make out what appeared to be a baseball diamond, dwarfed on a far corner. Dotting the surrounding area were smaller black buildings of similar architecture. One was the gym. Some were residential. He knew a few belonged to the Shin-Ra family. And he knew one belonged to Sephiroth.

Welcome back boys, indeed. Boys were everywhere. There had been an explosion of boys. Sitting up and down the black staircases, leaning up against the gate, falling off their skateboards on the cement. They were sitting out of windows, they were break dancing, they were wrestling in the grass, they were chatting, walking, chewing gum, smoking, screaming, laughing.

Some were in uniform, some not. There were preppy boys on their cell phones. There were jock boys, hip hop boys, goth boys pouting with their dyed black hair. To Cloud, it was a visual buffet. There were three boys near his age in Nibelheim. One of them was Ronny. But this … This was a fucking SELECTION. He could sleep with a different guy every night for the next three years.

'But I won't be a slut,' He promised himself. 'I'm saving it.'

They parked outside the gates. When Cloud turned the car off he sat there, the roar of the mob outside muted.

Cloud and his mother smiled at each other. And hugged. Then they took his bags out of the trunk. And hugged. And then stood there hugging some more. Mrs. Strife took his face and kissed him hard on his forehead, nose, and chin.

"Be good. Listen to what they say. Call me tonight."

"Mm-hm."

"I'm not gonna be dramatic," She declared, kissing both of his cheeks then taking a step back. Cloud smiled, and picking up all of his bags, passed through the gates. She watched him go. "Cloud?"

He turned.

"So what the fuck are you gonna ask?"

His smiled got wider, "I'm gonna wing it!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

His arms were about to simply break off. After dealing with carrying his possessions while standing in the long line for room assignments, having to wait for several boys to argue with the distributors, there was another equally long line for schedules. And more bitching. Cloud himself had simply accepted the paperwork and keys and got the fuck out of line.

The paper from the room line simply said: Gym locker 412. Hall locker 11. Room – Rufus Building, 207.

Okay.

His schedule was a bit more complicated. Breakfast was apparently at five-thirty AM, classes began at six. And his first block of classes appeared to be physical. The first was an hour long block, it's only description was ominous: RUN. The second block of time was an hour and a half long, and it wickedly declared: BOOT CAMP 1. Gulp.  
Then there was a five hour stretch of academic and military specific classes. He had Literature 1, Basic Tactics, Algebra 1, and Combat History. Lunch was in the mix there somewhere. And finally, another two hour long physical block described as Hand To Hand Basics/Swim.

Swim? People from Nibelheim didn't swim unless they fell in the fucking river, Cloud laughed to himself. It would be fun. Classes were done with at four PM, Dinner dinner at six, and lights out at ten.

Folding up the papers, he put them in his pocket. His room. It was on the second floor of the Rufus Building. It dawned on him why it was called that when he was greeted with a ten by five foot painted picture of Rufus Shin-Ra, looming in the foyer. Rufus was too rich and bratty to be considered realistically attractive, but the sexy, demanding smirk on his face made Cloud file him away into Spank Bank anyways. The entire building appeared to be dedicated to him, the walls were pristinely white and on the left side of every door, two perfect vertical rows of black dots. The numbers on the doors were black iron, but appeared to be written in Rufus's handwriting.

He unlocked door 207 and let himself in. He had arrived before his roommate. The room was a decent size, hardwood floors, two beds with white sheets and black pillows sat against the opposite walls. Beside each bed was a small nightstand and in between a large window with black curtains and the school crest. There were three doors. Cloud opened one and saw an average sized closet. He opened another and was surprised to find another closet. Alright! He opened the third door and it was the bathroom. No tub, just a stand up shower through a glass door. A potty. Small sink with a cabinet underneath. And … A urinal? Cloud flushed it to see if it was real. A fucking urinal.

He had simply dropped his things in the middle of the floor, but now threw them on the bed to the right. Everything was exactly the same so it really didn't matter which bed he chose. He opened up the curtains to inspect the view. It was mostly trees, and the unnaturally citrus shade of sky that seemed to be the norm in Midgar. The window faced nothing, just another residential building in the distance. But it was a nice nothing.  
Peaceful, like.

"I KNEW YOU'S WAS GONNA FUCKIN' BEAT ME HERE YOU RAT SONUVABITCH!"

Cloud whirled around as absolute chaos was spilling into the room. The boy was a little taller, almost muscular, shoulder length black hair spilling everywhere, hiding his face. He was wearing a tight camouflage t-shirt and the field fatigues. He had at least eight different brightly colored duffle bags strapped to his body, clothes trying to escape all of them, and he had a large pet carrier.

"THE FUCKIN' LIIINES!" He complained. Cloud noticed that when the boy said 'fuck' it sounded like 'fawk'.  
There was a haphazard removal of all the duffle bags, and they were thrown without care onto the empty bed. Something was squealing loudly in the pet carrier.

"Whas' ya name?" The boy asked, not shouting anymore. He suddenly seized one side of the mess of dark hair in his face and move it all smoothly to one side, revealing enormous brown eyes and an adorable nose.

"Cloud Strife," He introduced with a smile. He extended a hand and the boy took it, and exactly as Zack had done weeks ago, shook it all over town.

"Pleased. Cameron Wedge," He laughed. "Cam, though. Where ya from?"

"Nibelheim," Cloud said. He didn't mean it to sound like an embarrassing confession, but it came out that way.  
Cam chewed gum loudly for a heartbeat with a smile, "Fuckin' blonde ass, Nordic sonuvabitch. I'm local. Midgar," When Cam said Midgar, it sounded like 'Midgah'.

Whatever was in the pet carrier was getting desperate. Cloud had to ask, "Is there something like, alive in there?"

Cam looked alarmed, "You's said ya weren't fuckin' allergic to nothin' right? On the paper work?" When Cam said 'paper work', it sounded like 'paypah woik'.

"Oh. No I'm not."

Cam sighed relief with a smile and began, in an extremely high pitched baby voice, cooing sweetly to the creature inside, "Dis is my widdle fuckin' baby!" He opened up the door and out of the huge carrier stepped a tiny red cat with a microscopic ember burning on the end of its tail. It's crying immediately ceased and it trotted in circles, examining the room.

"We're allowed to have pets?"

Still talking in baby voice, "Donnot let his looks fool you, Cloud! Dis little bastard could fuckin' roast our balls at any given moment. Can't you! CAN'T YOU YOU LITTLE, CUTE SONUVABITCH!" The kitten delightedly jumped into Cam's lap. He cursed gently as the flaming little tail singed his arm. There were a lot of little burn marks all over Cam. "They's awesome fighters and live for fuckin' ever. I've had dis little fucker since da day I was born. He's supposed to have his first growth spurt real soon, and uh, if Mommy," He pointed to himself, "isn't around when dat happens, things could get ugly. And I registered him with Shin-Ra so … He's joined the fuckin' army too!"

Cloud was shocked when the tiny kitten said, "Fuckin' A!"

"That's cool as shit!" Cloud exclaimed, sitting on the floor across from Cam and his baby, "What's his name?"  
"Psycho Wedge," The kitten answered for himself.

"What does he eat?" Cloud said, gently stroking Psycho with his fingertips.

"Eh, dis and dat. He kinda likes hotdogs … Grapes … Pringles … Taco salad … Ricotta cheese. Ya know. Oh, and he'll tell you when he needs to take a shit. If I'm not around and he starts buggin' you, just tell him to shut his yap until Mommy comes back home. Or you's could take him out if you don't mind, no pressure. He's good though! Look. Psychopath, you need to take a shit?"

"Naw."

"How about a pisser?" When Cam said 'pisser' it sounded like 'pissah'.

"I said fuckin' naw," The kitten yawned.

Cloud laughed loudly at all of this information.

"Hey it's cool too, cause I get like, fuckin' extra credit for takin' care of him! FOR TAKIN' CARE OF MY OWN FUCKIN' KID! Does that not beat all?"

Cam abruptly dropped the kitten into Cloud's lap and started to rummage through his bags. He peeled off his shirt.

Please believe, Cloud Strife had no intentions of raping Cameron Wedge with his eyes, but it could not be helped. It was like a younger brother seeing his older stepsister through marriage in a bikini for the first time. It was a disgusting feeling. Wrong, wrong … Wrong …

But Cam was very tan, his body was lean, and something about his shoulder blades was incredibly sexy. His chest was smooth and he was just beginning to form abs, a trickle of dark, fuzzy hair running down the center. He shrugged into his short sleeve uniform shirt and buttoned it up slowly, then realizing he made an error, "… Fuckin' buttons …", he unbuttoned it quickly, then rebuttoned it all up correctly.

Cam had just unzipped his fly when a tiny spot on Cloud's arm felt like it had been burned right off, "Christ!" He looked down and saw Psycho's big brown eyes looking at him apologetically. Cloud smiled and touched a fingertip to the kitten's nose, and it bucked it's head up in pleasure.

When Cloud looked back up Cam was zipping up his uniform pants. He was more than a little grateful. Something about looking at Cam that way was just icky. There was something innocent about him.

"If he burns ya too much dump some cold ass water on him. He'll get his act together in a goddamn heartbeat!" Cameron was fiddling with his tie.

"It's gonna be cool living with him," Cloud thought out loud. "I never had a pet before."

"Well you can be Daddy then!" Cam laughed wickedly.

Psycho suddenly was at attention, "DADDY?" The kitten shouted. He leapt from Cloud's lap and ran in fierce circles all around the room and jumped from bed to bed. His little tail was smoking furiously, "WHERE?"

Cloud shot a questioning look at Cam. He chuckled and said in baby voice, "My widdle fucker has a s-c-r-e-w- fuckin' l-o-o-s-e. If you ever say the word d-a-d-d-y, he goes b-a-n-a-n-a-s! I have no idea why!"

Psycho gave his Mommy a glare, knowing some smack had been talked about him.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The orientation was at six PM. Cloud was both afraid time would pass too quickly or too slowly. If time went by fast, he would be a trembling testosterone wreck. If it went by too slow, the anticipation would surely drive him to insanity. He didn't have to worry much about it anymore because he was sitting on the aisle in the assembly hall, waiting for the one hundred first year boys to sit their asses down.

He thought long and hard about what to wear, but in the end he just stayed in what he originally put on that morning. If it all ended up around his ankles tonight, he'd have absolutely no regrets. He did however, put a spritz of cologne … On the South Pole.

Whether or not the South Pole was going to receive an explorer depended on one thing. The question. What was the question? Good fucking question!

Every time Cloud thought in his mind what to ask, the question never came completely out of his mental mouth. Every goddamn time the General, seeing that the two of them were obviously made for each other, would sweep him up into a wet, demanding kiss, their souls reunited after a lifetime of lonely agony.

The lights dimmed.

Cloud had been so wrapped up in his thoughts he had barely noticed that he was facing an enormous monitor. Until it flickered on, it really was invisible. It was a close up of the podium, nearly the size of a movie theater screen. There was another one behind the boys but not of the podium, nothing was on the screen.

Cloud squinted, scanning the stage. Chairs, that was it. He looked at his watch, six PM. Sephiroth, a being of perfection and punctuality, was somewhere in the mother fucking building. Where? He bent over the empty seat in front of him, one leg practically in the aisle, trying to see if there was a white head sitting in the front row, waiting to take the stage.

Boys were still filing in. Someone brushed Cloud's leg.

"Whatcha lookin' for?" Cam yawned.

"General Sephiroth."

"Oh. There he is," Cam said, rubbing one eye.

"Where?" Cloud hissed.

Cloud was still scanning the front rows when out of the corner of his eye, walking down the aisle …

No.

What had brushed against the gaping jean hole in the back of Cloud's right knee so carelessly … Was the billowing edge of a long leather coat, the wind of the walker blowing it out slightly.

And swaying to and fro with it, thigh length silver hair.

Cloud was awestruck.

The apparition glided down the center aisle. Then stopped.

Sephiroth turned his head slightly to the right, face obscured by chin length edgy strands of beautiful hair. Someone stood up and clapped him on the back, and the two continued to walk, stepping up the stairs to the stage.  
Cloud was hypnotized.

The General passed in front of the camera. For a split second, on the huge monitor, was his profile, passing too quickly for Cloud to make out any details. His attention turned back to Sephiroth's far away form, watching him sweep his coat to the side and have a seat.

And in an act of unthinkable evil, Sephiroth brushed his hand underneath his mane of hair and brought it all down over one shoulder in front of him. And was still.

Cloud was hard.

A/N

Chapter Image can be found here! - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=120# / d1co9oy

1- Forgive me for being a cock tease.

2- If you hadn't noticed already, I don't give three shits about grammar. Sorry, nazis. Sometimes I'll purposely break rules because … Well … I just don't care. And I love starting sentences with 'and'. Har Har.

3- Yeah, Razor Phase, made up. Along with all the kooky places of business below the plate.

4- Cameron Wedge. A relation to the Wedge we all know and love.

5- I took inspiration for the academy from actual military academies I've seen. They basically look like prisons.

6- The Rufus Building! Who wouldn't want to live there?

7- Again, thank you for the reviews, my ego could be used as the sail for a ship.


	4. Oh My God

'I'm sinking like a stone in the sea.  
'I'm burning like a bridge for your body.'

Cloud's head was tilted back. His eyes were closed.

'I'm sinking like a stone in the sea.'  
'I'm burning like a bridge for your body.'

He had hastily put his headphones in. It was on shuffle. The first song that bubbled up to the surface was Tautou by Brand New. Cloud slowly inhaled … And exhaled shakily.

'I'm sinking like a stone in the sea.'  
'I'm burning like a bridge for your body.'

Brand New was alright. Soft core. Sensitive. Whatever. It was a band that Tifa had recommended, and all the damn songs were about unrequited love. Nice, Tifa. But sometimes Cloud was in that sort of mood. And when the slow, quiet chords began as he fumbled with his Mp3 player, he was grateful for her on again, off again taste in chick music.

'I'm sinking like a stone in the sea.'  
'I'm burning like a bridge for your body.'

Truer words were never sung. He put it on repeat.

His heartbeat was finally slowing when he felt an elbow bounce against his, "You awright Cloud?" Cameron whispered.

Cloud nodded.

There had to be something mentally wrong with him. Fucked up in his head. How was it possible for a human being to desire a stranger so badly? He focused intensely on killing his painful erection with his mind. But just knowing he was there. Right there. Slowly his eyes opened and looked to the stage.

The elderly headmaster was speaking. Cloud couldn't hear and didn't want to. His eyes moved slowly to Sephiroth.

He had his head tilted slightly to the side, listening. Hair still spilled over one shoulder, and long legs were stretched out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other. The man sitting next to Sephiroth flicked his arm, and they looked at each other.

It dawned on Cloud that it was Zack Fair. An ever so slight feeling of calm blotted his panic, remembering their hours long conversation weeks ago. What had they talked about? Movies, music, the academy, just shooting the shit. Even though they were just acquaintances, Cloud still felt like … Maybe someone was in his corner. Someone at this place cared.

Better now, he turned off the player and pushed it into his pocket.

"- boys are going to be the best! A small group like this has many advantages and I'm going to make damn sure that each and every one of you take full advantage of everything that's being offered to you! By God this group will excel to heights tha -"

He rolled his eyes and started to put his buds back in. Cam nudged his elbow again, and held out a palm. They both shoved one end in an ear, sighing.

Cloud turned off the shuffle and put on what he wanted.

"What da fuck is this?" Cam winced.

"Anal Orgasm," Cloud whispered.

Cam crossed his arms in annoyance, but his knee started to bounce steadily up and down.

Through a sharp veil of screaming and drums, they listened out of one ear about how lucky they were to be in this year's group, and that they were obviously headed for world domination. The head drill sergeant was lengthily introduced. He looked like he was going to be a total hard on. But the boys supposed that's what his job description was. Gigantic, Fucking Hard On.

"I'm going to make SOLDIERS out of you!", "I won't stand for slackers or crybabies!", "Blah blah blah!" His red face was shouting, larger than life on the monitor. Cloud poked Cam and made a face Jim Carrey would have been proud of, and both boys snickered wickedly to each other.

Then a woman was introduced, she apparently was the head office lady, in so many words. She spoke gently to them about changes of schedule and room, telling them about the hours of the cafeteria and to remember to eat balanced meals, where they could find extra copies of the school map, guidance counselor, and other such practicalities. She crossed the line from helpful woman into crazy lady when she sniffed back tears about how proud she was to see another strong group of boys about to become men. "Blow me, grandma." Cam muttered, and Cloud stifled a chuckle.

Then, Zack stood up and went to the podium, "This guy's cool." Cloud whispered. Zack told them briefly that since tomorrow was the first day of the new semester, it was Big Brother Day. Himself and several other SOLDIERS would be all around campus if they needed help with anything at all. "Just look for me and those jerk offs in the second row," He added, pointing.

Then another man stepped up to speak, he was the head of education. He wanted to make sure the boys knew that academic classes were just as important as physical classes, and that no mercy would be shown on slipping grades, and that a failing grade would result in a repeated year. "Thanks for the info, dick." Cloud whispered, causing Cam to snort.

Yet another useless individual was lengthily and pompously introduced and he told the group that there would be random drug tests. Any sort of narcotic or steroid would result in a dishonorable discharge. He also said that sexual intercourse on campus would result in a write up. Uh oh! Three writes ups and you're history.

"So we can get laid twice!" Cam crassly pointed out, "But we can get blown however's much we want!" Cam stuffed his tie into his mouth to keep from laughing while Cloud covered his own with both hands, stomping his feet wildly.

"Shut the hell up! We're gonna get in trouble!" Cloud wheezed.

Cameron took out his end of the headphones, sat straighter in his seat and crossed his arms, making an effort to be good.

Cloud sighed happily and put away the player. The music and joking had definitely taken the edge off.  
Until the General stood up.

It got so quiet in the room that Cloud could hear the boots thud against the wooden stage. And with every thud, a tiny tingle jolted through his groin.

General Sephiroth stopped at the podium, filling up the empty space on the huge monitor. He looked for a moment dead on into the camera, cat eyes adjusting to the bright stage light.

Cloud took in every single detail. Sephiroth's perfect jaw line. His smooth skin. His hair. Eyes. Lips. Throat. Body.

Then those eyes moved, looking over the small crowd of boys, slowly.

"I have nothing to say."

Cloud exhaled slowly.

It was exactly as it should have been. Soft, low, pooling, calm. Underneath the voice was a throaty rumble. Cloud, being a foreigner, detected a hint of the Midgar accent. Although far more careful than Cam's sloppy dialect, Sephiroth's voice was still back alley slums taught to be upper plate. Expressive, but smoothed out. Cloud wished he could drive all the propriety out of that voice, forcing that prim 'nothing' to become a 'nothin'' on top of him in the dark. Cloud absolutely melted.

But then he registered what the man had actually said.

"I'll have something to say … When I see what you can do."

There was a long silence. Sephiroth was still looking over the boys.

"If there's something you want to know, I'll tell you. Stand up."

Cloud, almost involuntarily, clamored to his feet and out into the aisle, practically panting, wanting to get a decent place in line.

But … Nobody was lining up.

And … The entire room was looking at him.

What was going on?

He glanced over to Cam, who simply sat there, looking horrified for his new friend. Then he saw Cam's big brown eyes flick to behind his shoulder, and watched the face turn from horrified, to petrified, to mortified … To incredibly amused.

The monitor behind the boys. The other monitor facing the stage.

Cloud was on it. There he fucking was.

His mussed hair, his black vest, his skinny jeaned legs and all.

Blushing like a virgin on his wedding night.

There was no room in his brain to fit the entirety and perfection of his humiliation. If God had appeared in that moment and offered him instant death, Cloud would have taken it without hesitation.

Before he could sit back down to hide in shame, an usher pulled him farther out into the aisle and shoved a microphone in his limp hand, actually closing Cloud's trembling fingers around it.

Frozen.

Cloud looked at the monitor of Sephiroth.

Sephiroth looked at the monitor of Cloud.

Then, as if the scenario couldn't get any worse, the image on both monitors split, becoming half Cloud, half Sephiroth. It was like CNN in hell.

Cloud had to watch himself, watch himself, mortify himself.

"Name?"

It was almost a whisper, "Cloud. Strife."

Sephiroth blinked calmly.

'A question,' Cloud prayed. 'Give me a question.'

Like rush hour traffic, a million perverted thoughts went spinning through his brain. Do you like it wet and tight, or rough and sloppy? Have you ever wanted to make a love slave out of a blonde, small town boy? How big is your cock in inches and diameter? I'm saving my virginity for you, would you like it with fries? Did you know I'd do anything for you? Can I please taste your tongue? Do you know that you're beautiful? What can I do to make you happy?

Could you love someone like me?

If Sephiroth was getting impatient, he didn't show it.

"Sephiroth?" Cloud finally said, his own voice fully entering his ears. He was surprised to hear it. He hadn't actually heard himself in years. It sounded young, obviously gay, but with his own soft version of a masculine rumble. A purr. If he had heard himself on the phone he wouldn't mind continuing the conversation.  
White eyebrows raised slightly, listening, waiting.

The thoughts were still buzzing by, and out of time, Cloud grabbed onto one and went with it.  
"What kind of music do you like?"

Sephiroth blinked twice. Slowly his lips parted, but he didn't say anything.

Silence.

A thousand years went by.

Then, a guffaw from behind Sephiroth on the stage. Zack was busting a gut loud enough to echo off the moon. From behind Cloud, unable to take it anymore himself, Cameron joined in. The two men were choking and coughing on their laughter.

The sound moved through the crowd of boys like a zombie infection. The faculty on the stage joined in.

The entire room seemed to be moving with laughter, the sound tugging even at the corners of Cloud's humiliated mouth. He looked at Sephiroth and a tender smile broke out on his pink face. It was either that or burst into flames.

He watched Sephiroth's mouth curved up gently.

The usher was clearly not amused at all and seized the microphone from Cloud, who was all too willing to give it up. Then he was shooed off screen to take the walk of shame back to his seat, where Cameron was almost in need of oxygen.

The rest of the answer and question forum went off like fucking gangbusters. After Cloud had broken the ice by sacrificing any dignity he might have had, most of the boys lined up. They asked things like, "Do you have advice for materia selection?" and "What ways can I improve my stamina?" and "Do you teach any weekend seminars?"

All perfectly appropriate questions.

"Trial and error is very important," "Focus on keeping your heart rate at the correct level when training. See the academy doctor, he'll tell you what it should be," "I try to do at least one a year. Keep checking the schedules."

All perfectly appropriate answers.

'Well,' Cloud thought, 'That's that.'

That is fucking that.

"Do you smoke, Cam?" He whispered.

"You need?"

Cloud nodded. Cameron fished a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his pocket. Cloud took everything and left without another word. He couldn't watch that beautiful face he'd never kiss, or listen to that bedroom voice he'd never hear calling his name for another minute. Nobody tried to stop him.

The walk back to the room was a long, slow one.

He lit a cigarette, shielding the flame from the breeze. He had stolen his mother's cigarettes before. He hated them. But these cigarettes weren't normal. They were sweet, and made his lips tingle and chest ache. Cloves? Kinda nice.

Oh, Christ. CHRIST! What kind of music do you listen to? Was that seriously the best he could come up with? He was standing in front of the beautiful General of the fucking Shin-Ra army, not bored in his underwear, chatting with some stranger on AIM for the first time.

It was over. There was no breathless run down the center aisle to meet each other with a longing kiss. No spark of soul's recognition in Sephiroth's eyes. There was nothing.

Without entirely meaning to, he tried to conjure up his Sephiroth … The one that was always too willing to submit to his fantasies, to talk to him, to tell him everything was going to be alright. To kiss him.  
But his head was vacant. That Sephiroth meant nothing. He had seen the real one, and missed his chance. Cloud's heart sank.

He licked his tingling lips and let the tears drip down his face.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cameron found him about an hour later sitting in the open window, the last cigarette hanging between his lips. Psycho was sitting on the other side of the windowsill sleeping.

"Hiya."

Cloud didn't turn, but slowly wiggled his long fingers in a greeting.  
"Everyone was askin' where you's went."

"Who the fuck is everyone?" Cloud exhaled darkly.

"Buncha guys. Uh, Mr. Fair too."

"Fuck 'em," Ashes were flicked off the end of the clove.

"Yo Cloud um … We don't know each other so good yet but … You need to talk?"

Cloud shrugged. Cam gently smacked Psycho's butt, and he sleepily hopped down from the windowsill. He took the kitten's place.

"Sup?" He asked.

"Why did you come here?"

Cam thought about it, taking the clove from Cloud's fingers, "Hm. Well, it's complicated. My dad. I don't ever wanna disrespect him, he believes in a lot of good, right things, ya know? But that don't always provide so good. I got five little sisters-"

"Five?" Cloud asked, eyes wide.

"Yea! They's fuckin' crazy little girls. But my mom always had to work, ya know? Right up til she had em, then right back to work after. I never minded helpin' takin' care of em. My dad did dis and dat, doin' what he could," Cam sucked on the clove, "Between doin' what he believed in. The same day I turned sixteen my mom told me she was havin' another kid. Another fuckin' girl. She was sayin' she was gonna get another night job. I was so mad at my fuckin' dad. So I signed up." Cam blew the embers on the cigarette and held it out to Psycho, who licked the burning end, delighting in the cherry taste.

"What does your dad do?"

"Tear down Shin-Ra. He's a fuckin' rebel," Cam said slowly. He tossed the butt out of the window.

Cloud let the words sink in, and realized how hard a thing like that would be to admit. "That's … Awful, Cam."

"Dat's life, Cloud. Who cares? What da hell else am I gonna do with my time? Fuck school. I'll go here and fuckin' send my pay home. Shin-Ra's money." He said with a chuckle.

Cloud swallowed. For joining the academy the boys got five thousand a year, junior military pay. They weren't adults, so the check was sent to the parents, who were expected to send it out to the boys. But then again money going through a filter always seemed to come out a little fuzzy. Of course the parents used some. Cloud's mother was doing alright … But the thought crossed his mind also that it would be nice for her to not have to work so many weekends. But Cam's family was going to be depending on it.

"How about you's?" He asked, "How's your Dad? Why didja come here?"

"Dad left us. My family is my mom, I never knew him. And I came here because it's my dream to be a SOLDIER," Cloud's laugh was loud and bitter. "OH, that and I wanted to make General Sephiroth fall in love with me." The words spilled uncontrollably out of his mouth like a premature ejaculation.

There was a thick silence. Cloud's breath hitched several times. Cameron threw a solid arm around him and he began to sob loudly. "It was killing me … I wanted to start new, ya know? Just be myself! And the first day … I just …" Cloud rambled, eventually trailing off.

They sat for a minute, the only sounds were sniffles. Cloud suddenly sat up and wiped his face, "Cam I'm so fucking sorry. I really didn't want to-"

"Cloud, things gettin' a little too heavy for me."

He slickly reached behind him into a neon orange duffle bag and withdrew a black flask with a skull on it.  
With a grin, he spun open the top, "You's a hella cool guy. Don't let a little …" He searched for the right word, "FUCKIN' MISHAP rain on your parade! You's were yourself up dere! You like punk rock? You's wanted to know if the fuckin' General did too! Who cares?"

Suddenly Cam's voice became so completely proper that it startled Psycho, "Excuse me Mr. General Sephiroth Sir, would you please give me five to seven tips on how I can better become the perfect SOLDIER? GIMME A GODDAM BREAK! You think that sonuvabitch hasn't heard dat one a million goddamn times? You had da best fuckin' question of all! Nobody's was laughin' at you Cloud! They was laughin' because you was fuckin' funny!"

Cam handed over the flask, "And for your infamation, everyone was askin' where you's went because there is a fuckin' party at Mr. Fair's, and we are fuckin' invited thanks to you's, and right now we are fuckin' missing it. Every party needs at least one homo, AMIRITE!"

"Cam … Are you okay with …" Cloud's face was filled with doubt.

"Long as I don't wake up wit you spoonin' me, it's fuckin' cool. Now you listen to Cameron. I'ma fuckin' help you wit your guy troubles. You fuckin' help me wit my girl troubles, cause I got a lot of 'em! AND HEY," His face was completely serious, "You better let me know if some assholes try and fuck wit you. Serious. I'll bust open some jaws and tell everyone you's my bitch, like in prison."

Cloud erupted in laughter.

"You think I care if dis school thinks I'm a homo? Fuck it! If shit starts up I'll take some names for messin' wit my Nordic bitch! That'll be THAT! Now tell me, are ya in the mood to go out? Bottoms up!"

Without hesitation, Cloud threw back his head, taking a big mouthful of whatever was in the flask. He swallowed and shuddered, "Christ!"

Cam did the same and grimaced, kicking his legs a little against the windowsill.

"Two morose sonsabitches no more!" He gasped.

They each took another swig. Then one more for good measure. Cloud changed out of the vest and, in his slightly fuzzy state, just put on the first shirt he felt. Cam did much the same, ending up in a retro looking red shirt that had some obscure place of business logo on it, and camouflage shorts. Cloud would have told him he was mismatched, but after five mouthfuls of straight Vodka, it looked really cool.

"Where's the party?" Cloud asked loudly as he locked the door.

"Haha! Hell um, where the SOLDIERS stay at? Ya know dat fuckin' building?"

As they made their way across the campus, and it was obvious where the party was at. They simply followed the sound of the bass.

"Here's the fuckin' kids!" A red headed SOLDIER shouted as the door was thrown open before they even knocked. He took Cloud and Cameron by the collars of their shirts and pulled them roughly inside.

In the common room, a big group of SOLDIERS were sitting all over the floor and couches, playing a racing video game. In the kitchen, another big group was playing cards around a chip bag covered table. He recognized a few teachers sitting up on the kitchen counter, talking and drinking.

Cloud realized with a slight wave of shyness, that he and Cam were the only students there. He half heartedly wondered if Sephiroth was lurking in one of the rooms.

"Cloud! Good to see you again, buddy!" Zack ran over and pulled him into a quick hug. He patted Cam on the back, "Where did you go?"

"To hide in shame!" Cloud shouted over the music. It was extremely vulgar hip hop.

"Well, I have something for you, don't let me forget okay!" Zack was just a little tipsy.

He led the boys down the hallway to a large smoky room with a pool table. They sat on two barstools up against the wall and watched the men drink and play, sneaking sips from open beer cans when the owners weren't looking.  
SOLDIERS were perverts. They delighted in the shocked laughter from Cloud and Cam while regaling them with dirty experiences under the plate. When they mentioned the HoneyBee Inn, Cloud asked if they had seen the Lorna Rust memorial, and if it was amazing. The SOLDIERS scratched their heads. Who was Lorna Rust?

The conversation turned to the seminar, "Duuuuude what was the most random thing I've ever seeeen!" Said the red head who opened the door, his name turned out to be Brian.

None of the SOLDIERS could believe Cloud had the nerve to ask such left field question. He let himself laugh about it. What was done was done. He was hoping Sephiroth wouldn't hear himself being talked about from some other room and enter. Cloud had sobered up a little too much to deal with that.

He stole a sip of Zack's drink.

"IIII KNOOOOW! Sephiroth, speechless!" Zack laughed, stretching and groaning, "Oh shit, you kids need to be heading back huh? You got ten minutes until lights out!"

They snapped their heads to the clock. So soon? Zack shook their stools and they got down, grumbling.  
He saw them out to the door. Cloud remembered something, "Zack, what did you have for me?"

Zack's face went blank. Drunk. Then he lit up, "Oh!"

He took something from the top of a shelf next to the door and shoved it into Cloud's chest, "You got eight minutes! Run, bitches, run!" The door slammed in their faces.

"RUN, BITCHES, RUN!" They could hear shouted with laughter from almost everyone inside the building. Must have been a SOLDIER inside joke.

Before he could look at whatever the thing he received was, Cam broke out into a mad dash towards home. Cloud clutched the object and belted after him. They ran like their lives depended on it, across the deserted campus and into the Rufus Building, up the stairs, fumbling with the lock, and into their rooms.

Panting, the boys dropped into their beds. Not a second later, the lights in the hallway shut off. Cam turned on the floor lamp, "Good fuckin' timin'!" He breathed.

Cloud picked himself up and went into the bathroom. Pulling down his jeans and sitting on the toilet, he finally looked at what Zack had for him.

It was a plain black CD case. Cloud smiled. They talked about music a lot that day outside Nibelheim, and they made vague promises to burn each other CD's. Cloud felt a little bad for not following through. But then he hadn't actually thought Zack would do it, figuring it was something people said they'd do but not really.

If the music at the party was any indication, this was going to be an interesting listen. Cloud opened the case and sighed. Zack's handwriting was goddamn chicken scratch.

A to your Q – Gen. S.

He reread it.

A to your Q – Gen. S.

Cloud looked at it for a very long time.

"Cam, do you have a laptop?"

Cameron was already in bed, scratching Psycho's butt, "Fuckin' smoked up my cloves, fuckin' drank all my booze, fuckin' hoggin' my computer, what the hell?" He muttered good naturedly while leaning over the edge of his bed and digging up a bright purple laptop bag from underneath. He then turned off the lamp and rolled over.

Cloud pulled it out and set it in his lap.

He pressed the CD into the laptop's tray. He then pulled his earphones out of his Mp3 player and plugged them in.  
For a few pounding heartbeats, the laptop read the CD. Listen, rip, or open to view files?

Listen.

Cam's media player popped up. There was only one song. Oh My God – Kaiser Chiefs, was all the media player had to say about it.

He didn't know this band. Was it techno? 80's? Was it hair burning metal? God forbid, easy listening?

Cloud clicked play and listened intensely.

Rumbly feedback.

Suddenly a quick beat.

Cloud blushed as it briefly became a little bit … Sexy. Like, grinding in smoky bar sexy.  
Then an even toned, almost quiet singer … Then he stretched his calm voice into a controlled scream.

Cloud's eyes rolled closed. A realization. This was indie music. Indie music was what punks listened to when they wanted to fuck. This song was made for kissing, for taking off clothes.

'I'll buy Seph the vinyl for his birthday,' Cloud planned.

Cloud listened to the entire song once before fumbling with his Mp3 player cords, plugging it into the laptop and getting that damn song into it.

He quietly slid Cam's laptop back under his bed, he and Psycho now snoring.

Into the bathroom he crept.

He closed his eyes, and put on the song.

Sephiroth pushed him to the floor, tearing at his jeans and hurling them furiously. He settled between naked legs, his beautiful face flushed, eyes blazing, hair dripping all over Cloud's body. For a moment they looked at each other exactly how they had earlier on the monitors, only now close and breathing each other in.  
Cloud fingers slowly curled up into silver hair. And yanked.

Green eyes went wide.

Sephiroth's fingers dug into his bare thighs, he bit his lips, he sucked his tongue, he pulled blonde hair, he crushed him into the bathroom floor with his weight.

Cloud covered his mouth to stifle a gasp as he came suddenly, spilling all over his fist and stomach.  
He stayed like that on the bathroom floor, listening to the song Sephiroth had sent to him over and over.  
And after a while, he picked himself up, cleaned off, and collapsed into bed. Before he fell asleep, he had the strange realization that this had been only one day.

Getting up, putting bags in the car, driving to Midgar, getting his info, meeting Cam, seeing Sephiroth, getting drunk, watching Zack and his friends play pool, running back to the room, hearing Sephiroth's song, getting hard more times than he could count, getting his heart broken, crying more times than he'd cared to, jerking off. It had all been only one day.

This could have easily been the longest day ever.

After all the grief, maybe it had even ended well. Maybe it wasn't over yet.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Cloud jolted upright in bed.

A screaming fire alarm.

His first thoughts were Psycho, the stupid kitten caught the fucking room on fire. He was fumbling to get out of a tangle of blankets when Cameron came strolling out of the bathroom, already dressed. He turned off the alarm clock.

Five AM.

"Top o' the mornin' to ya, fucker!"

A/N

Chapter images can be found here! - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=120#/d1co9q7

1- I hope you enjoy the chapter images!

2- I'll say it again, the songs in this chapter are … REAL!

3- Cloud's a crybaby. Maybe this isn't so OOC afterall … BURN!

Cloud: :0

Author: XD jk bb ilu

4- Thanks so much for the reviews! They mean a lot.


	5. Late 80s

Cloud could make out 'Satan', 'fuck', and 'cocaine' through the muddy, unsatisfying din of guitars.

But Cam knew every growling, guttural word, and was making a terrible face while he uttered them softly, lying on his bed and waiting for Cloud to get ready. Sometimes people's musical preferences just didn't fit. He let Sephiroth's song echo in his mind as it had through his dreams all night. That particular musical preference fit just fine. Ahem.

Cloud smiled sleepily and put on his field fatigues and a beater, not bothering with a shower. He figured he'd just have to take one later. Checking out his face, he pulled open wide his only slightly bloodshot eyes. One lucky thing about being from Nibelheim was the undeniable fact that he could hold his booze like a pirate. The only evidence of the various drinkies from the previous night was a good, long whiz and a throaty belch.

He looked at himself squarely.

Last night he had done it again. Cried and ran away. Depression dramatastic. Oh whoa is Cloud. On the first damn day? No more.

He pointed at himself in the mirror, "Knock it the fuck off."

He shoved his school clothes into his messenger bag and was ready to go.

As they made their way to get breakfast, it was clear that five AM had come a lot sooner than anyone had expected it to. It dawned on Cloud that there were probably several shindigs going on around campus last night. Although it was a strict military academy during school hours, it was also a notorious party metropolis what with it's location, and rowdy SOLDIERs hanging around it all the time. As long as the boys were in their rooms by ten, what they did on their own time was their own business. Little clusters of boys sat here and there, all yawning and some nodding off on the spot.

The cafeteria looked like a funeral.

The boys had their heads close to their plates of eggs and toast or pancake combos. Some moved slowly to the trash cans or to refill their juice. Some somberly stood with their backs against the wall for support, practically wilting.

The most grief stricken table of all was the one the SOLDIERs were sitting at. Almost all the men had their heads down. Too bad, Cloud thought, I have questions.

He pointed them out to Cam, who being one of those disgusting morning people, practically skipped with him to their table. A couple moved over like restless corpses, making room for the two of them.

"Cloud?" Zack said, face smooshed against the wood of the table.

"Hmmm?" He answered, sipping his juice.

"When you guys become SOLDIERs … don't ever drink … " He advised, raising his head slowly. " … Before the first day of the new semester … "

"Amen," Said a SOLDIER whose name was Max. He had confessed the previous evening to having a thing for dick girls, among other things.

It was their job to be glorified hall monitors that day, helping the new boys find their way. But instead they were all hung over. Zack slapped the table and everyone groaned loudly, "First act of Big Brother duty! It is my advice that you don't eat."

Cloud and Cam were already half done, "Why not?" They both asked through pancakes.

"Oh. Well, you'll see. But know that there are doggy bags by the ketchup and shit. From now on, pack it away and eat if before your first sit down class," Zack was rubbing small circles into his sinuses, looking miserable.

Tact be damned, "What the hell was that CD you gave me last night?" Cloud suddenly asked, taking the opportunity to grill him.

Zack was now rubbing circles on his eyebrows and groaning, "Seph burned it."

Oh, Holy of Holies! He lowered his voice to a personal tone, "You really know him that well, Zack?"

"Who doesn't?"

'Me!' Cloud thought desperately, and asked, "When did he burn it?"

"Ughnnh … after the seminar."

"From where?"

" … The party … " Zack was pressing his fingers firmly into his closed eyes.

"Did he say anything?" It was rapid fire questioning.

Cam turned to Max and started asking him questions about his dirty confession. Max spit out his coffee.

"Hmm. He just said to give it to you when you showed up, then he had to go."

Cloud's face went white with information. Sephiroth took the time to pick out a song and actually burn it. What if Sephiroth had been WAITING for him to get to the party? While he was sitting in the window bitching and burning up his lungs! If he hadn't run off what would have happened? Maybe Sephiroth would have … Broken the ice a little better? Shared his beer? Revoked Cloud's membership to the V-club? Ring a ding ding?

Cloud must have looked disturbed, because Zack gently said, "He wasn't mad at you."

"For what?"

"You know. For being weird," Zack sort of laughed, then 'ow'ed and put his fingers back onto his eyes. "He left because he had a thing this morning. I don't know what the fuck he does. But yeah, Ohh … He did actually say something."

"What!"

"Not so looooud!" Zack grumpily looked at Cloud. You could hear the whine in his voice. "He said you could burn him one back if you feel like it."

"Will you still be here later tonight?"

Zack nodded, his head hitting the table, "Come by the house whenever."

Cloud rubbed him on the back and waved goodbye to Cam, who was filling all the SOLDIERs in on the previous evenings colorful conversation.

Cloud smiled. Oh yes, a CD was going to be burned. A seriously executive musical decision needed to be made though. This needed to be the perfect song. A way to tell Sephiroth how he felt and that it wouldn't make him look like a mental patient. This was like fucking chess.

Wishful thinking, but he couldn't help but wonder if there was an iota of a chance, a super mini fun size possibility … That Seph could be interested. This wasn't the late 80's … You don't just make people mix tapes.

He wanted to think.

But first, he had to get this stupid day out of the way.

-.-.-.-

Cloud had seen the athletic field when he was driving past, but actually standing on it sent butterflies into his full stomach. This was happening. He was here.

The field was massive in a way the universe is massive, there was nobody even nearby, just the sound of grunts, whistles, and shouting echoing in the distance. It was still completely dark outside except for a hint of lavender on the horizon. The artificial grass scrunched wet with dew under his boots as he walked to Zone 9, where his first class was held. There were only six other boys there, sitting in a kind of circle next to a small, orange coned off track.

"Hey," Cloud said and sat down with the little group.

The boys had been silent and forlorn looking, but then their gears started to turn a little bit, "Oh, you're that one guy!" A tall boy with brown emo hair said yawning a chuckle.

Another blonde boy who was scarily skinny also snapped to recognition, "Yeeeah you're the one who joked with the General."

Joked? Cloud shrugged with a sideways smile.

"Stand up boys," Came a strong female voice. The seven boys stood up at attention.

"I'm Nurse Rhonda. Your running coach."

A woman, perhaps in her late 20's was walking towards them. Everything about her screamed butch. She had a severe black ponytail, and not a stitch of make up. She wore black sports bra and track pants, and was holding a bullhorn. Her abs were terrifying. They looked like they could stab an eye out.

"And trust me, this is running, not speed walking and not jogging. Our goal in this class is simple: run for sixty minutes. If you vomit three times, you're excused. If you cough up blood three times, you're excused. If you cough up blood twice and vomit once, you are not excused. When I say run, you run. When I blow the whistle, you stop. Do you understand everything I've just said?"

"YES MA'AM!" They all said in unison.

She laughed. It was a strange, demented sound, "Ma'am? My cock is longer, hairier, and sweatier than all of yours put together! Call me Sir!"

"YES SIR!"

She walked slowly over to a lawn chair and sat down. She lifted the bullhorn to her mouth and screamed, "RUN!"

Back home, Cloud had been doing the workout thing for quite some time. He could do sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, jogging, the whole nine. He thought he was in pretty good shape. He thought wrong.

After a mere sixteen minutes into pure, balls to the walls, non-stop running, he fell to his hands and knees and vomited up everything he had just eaten. He spit in breathless after shock for a moment, before noticing that the pancakes still smelled … Sweet.

He absolutely dry heaved himself inside out with disgust.

"STRIFE, ARE YOU HAVING A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?"

"No Sir!" He quickly forced himself up and continued. Before too much longer, every boy had thrown up at least once. They were slipping on their own puke.

The evil witch turned on the bullhorn just to cackle into it. "RUN, BITCHES," she cawed, "RUUUN!"

The bitches ran. Through puke, bloody mucus, side cramps, and that cawing, satanic laughter. After a while, Cloud found a happy place inside himself imaging that he was John Connor from Terminator 2, and Sephiroth was a hot but deadly android in biker clothes. They were running through Cosmo Canyon with perfect hair whipping behind them, appealing smudges of dirt on their faces, loaded up to hell with heavy artillery, and blasting the shit out of motorcycle cops.

"Cloud, come with me if you want to live."

"Oh I don't know, Sephiroth! I'm a young and naïve boy, and you're such a hot but deadly android! Who KNOWS what you'll do to me in the dead of night out in the middle of nowhere?"

Cloud smiled.

When Nurse Rhonda's whistle finally blew, Cloud's body fell into a little pile of limbs and blonde hair before his brain had even registered what the sound meant. He sat up with a groan and looked around. A couple of the other guys had fallen over too, one right into a grassy smear of puke.

"That was forty minutes," Nurse Rhonda announced, stepping around the pukes piles to circle the fallen boys. "Stand up."

Trembling, they all got to their feet.

She turned on the bullhorn and laughed into it, "I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT THERE WAS NO TIME LIMIT ON THE FIRST DAY! FORTY MINUTES! AREN'T YOU PROUD OF YOURSELVES? TOMORROW OUR GOAL IS THIRTY MINUTES. BY THE END OF THIS EIGHT WEEK COURSE, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO RUN FOR AN HOOOUUURRR!" She said the word 'hour' with the bullhorn right up against a bleach blonde boy's ear, "WITH ZERO DIFFICULTY!"

Turning off the bullhorn, she grinned, "You'll need that particular skill for Running and Boot Camp 2."

The boys looked less than enthusiastic. Someone let out a helpless groan.

She tapped he bullhorn against her leg, and softened a bit, "We have a few minutes left. Wanna hear a story about General Sephiroth?"

They all perked up. Cloud almost forgot his mouth tasted like stomach acid.

"You're all bound to hear this story one way or another, but don't tell him I was the one who told you. This was way before he was General. He was Sergeant Sephiroth then," She smiled in a familiar remembrance that Cloud would have envied if he wasn't totally convinced she was a saltwater dyke, "War, right? We were locked down in total silence. No planes, no cars, no radio. Very long story short, General Sephiroth's camp found out that our medical camp was going to be targeted. So…"

She stopped to laugh a bit, "So we're in silence right? General Sephiroth wrote what was up in code, put it in his pocket and ran it to us."

The boys looked impressed.

"Fifty-seven miles."

Jaws dropped.

"In about six hours."

Cloud blinked.

"By morning we had the message. General Sephiroth ran the whole way without stopping. I won't ever forget how he looked when he showed up. Please, please don't tell him I was the one who told you this. Our camp was hidden at the bottom of a hill. He comes running down it as fast as his skinny legs could carry him … He realizes that he's arrived … but … he can't freakin' stop. He's been running too long and the hill's too damn steep, right?

"There's this huge tent in his path, and a big group of junior nurses in training out front, and he's stumbling trying to stop himself," She wiped a tear out of her eye, "And they're just kind of looking at him, not moving. He shouts, top of his lungs, arms waving everywhere, 'RUN BITCHES, RUN!' they scatter and he slams," she smacked her hand, "right into that tent. It buckled of course and the poor General and that stupid tent rolled like twenty feet! I had to bandage him up, that man was a mess! And the greatest battle cry in Shin-Ra history was coined!"

She and the boys laughed long and hard until their stomachs couldn't take it anymore.

"But he saved us. So that's an example of why we need you bitches to be able to run. Anyways," She patted her ravine of abs. "I'm going to snag some pancakes. They smell pretty good."

Groan.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud stood under the shower washing literal vomit and shit out of his hair. The past hour and a half was a painful mirage of sit ups, push ups, pull ups, climbing ropes, crawling under razor wire, hopping through tire obstacles, swinging across monkey bars, scaling walls made out of dirt and mud, and oddly enough, gobbling marshmallows.

The Boot Camp 1 instructor was Coach Van Sise. He was a good looking guy, young, brown hair, olive eyes, calves of steel, college frat boy looks. And he was only as bad as he was paid to be, opting to just laugh at Cloud falling all over himself than yell at him for doing so. It being the first day, he was timing the seven boys to see how much they could do of each exercise in a minute. Then, during the last five minutes of class, he forced them to do chubby bunnies.

When Cloud had entered the locker room for a shower, he was an exquisite mess. Mud caked, sweaty, flushed, trembling, mouth covered in marshmallow stickiness. Barely able to stand, he had turned to see how the back view was doing. It was still in tact. But not as grandiose as it was going to be once he got cleaned up and into uniform.

He leaned up against the shower stall and let the hot water rush onto his head. It wasn't so bad after the fact. The pain was what it was – painful. But it was a manly sort of achy pain that made him feel useful. All morning he thought about Sephiroth, running that important message to the medical camp. He really was a hero. He deserved to be worshipped, loved. Every inch of him.  
Pretending the shower wall was a smooth, strong chest, he laid his cheek against it, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. Sephiroth. He listened to good music. And he had a sense of humor, apparently. He had to have one if he hung out with the likes of Zack and Nurse Rhonda. He was brave. He was stunning in every way. Cloud absent mindedly nuzzled the cold wall.

'Fuck, I'm lonely', he thought, abruptly turning off the water. The shower floor was absolutely atrocious. He half heartedly swooshed some of the hellish mess into the draining water with his foot. He was in no mood to clean a public shower stall.

After drying off and putting on his uniform and shoes with reverence, it was time to tame "the beast". He had decided against keeping his hot iron in the gym locker, a decision he was regretting. But even if Cam had offered to be his pretend butch, which Cloud had taken into serious consideration, he didn't want to attract any negative faggot attention in the locker room. He shook a towel through his hair, picked up a comb and began assessing the damage manually.

"Hi."

Cloud looked and at the sink next to him was one of the boys from the morning classes. "What's up?" he replied, parting the back of his head roughly. His hair was already starting to air dry, the roots readying themselves to lift up to gravity defying heights.

"You're Cloud, right?"

"Yup. What's your name?" He ratted one spike into submission.

"I'm Skylar. This morning was fun, huh?"

Cloud looked at him. His short hair had been bleached blonde, jet black at the roots, and had been worked into a little fauxhawk. He had dark eyes. Really nice skin, tinted a soft yellow. Pale, thin lips. A smooth voice.

"Fun?" Cloud laughed, "How many marshmallows could you fit?"

Skylar turned on the water, "I got to eight."

"Beat you! I could fit ten."

"Impressive," He replied, looking Cloud up and down in his mirror.

Red Alert! We have a cute homo to port! Repeat, queer to port! Cloud swallowed, "What class do you have next?"

"I have to dig out my schedule, but I think it's Communications. You?"

"Lit," he answered with a shrug.

"Well if nothing else, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Good times," Cloud agreed.

Skylar laughed a little, "Maybe by the end of this I'll be able to do ten chubby bunnies, too."

"It's easy … just relax your throat," Cloud flirted with a coy smile, immediately wishing he hadn't. He threw everything into his bag in a hurry.

Skylar's eyes widened a little and he smiled back, "… I'll do that."

They headed in opposite directions.

Cloud felt guilty. Where did that even come from? Sure, the bottle blonde was cute, but … Not that cute.  
He didn't understand himself sometimes. Talking to some guy he cared nothing for and he and whips out the greatest homo pick up line in history. He stands in front of the object of all his affections and whips out the lameness like a limp cock on a Tuesday.

He put a hand to his cheek. Still felt cold from the shower wall. He needed something warm, quick, before he lost his mind.

-.-.-.-.-.-.

"I'm so fuckin' hungry. I'm so fuckin' tired. I am tungry."

"Did you throw up?"

"Yea. I threw up all over dis fuckin' kid runnin' in front of me. When I gets sick it goes like … Projectile. I couldn't even fuckin' eat lunch because of it. Zack was so right."

Psycho was sitting on Cam's stomach, being fed tater tots and ketchup. Cam tried to steal one but the little red kitten shrieked in protest.

"Tomorrow we'll pack it," Cloud said, lying on his bed like a rag doll.

"Feel like talkin' about classes?"

"Hell no."

Cam laughed, "How was it anyways?"

"Just like stupid classes back home."

"Same here."

"Take me outside. Pronto," Psycho interrupted.

"Hold it for a second. Tell me about the fuckin' hand to hand, man. I got swords this quarter instead."

"We didn't do much, it was just talking mostly, ya know? Like, rules of the class and grading stuff. The point is to try and do different types then pick the one we like best for later classes. Then I guess we're going to fucking swim a few times a week."

"You swim today?"

Cloud grimaced and looked away before quickly turning his eyes back on Cam. "Yes."

"You don't like swimmin'?"

"It's not something I've ever really like, done. And we don't have any bathing suits. He made us strip to our underwear…" Cloud sighed. " … I never wear any."

Cam gasped, "You don't wear no underpants?"

"No! What for?"

"For just such a fuckin' occasion! What did you do?"

"The coach loaned me a … Speedo."

Cam and Psycho bawled with laughter. Cloud's pillow met Cam's face.

"How was sword training?" he gritted, changing the subject.

"Same as you, talkin' just for today. But it's gonna be fuckin' bad ass, I got a cool guy. You'll like it."  
Cloud nodded.

"I'ma walk dis fucker, and go eat somethin'. Much love," Cam clipped a zebra striped leash on Psycho.

"Can I use your laptop?"

"No porn," Cam said sternly.

"I won't," Cloud laughed. "Oh hey, do you have any blank CDs?"

Cam sighed, "Someday I'ma need somethin' you got. When dat day comes I don't wanna hear no lip about it," He dug out a blank CD and threw it on the bed next to Cloud.

Cam and Psycho departed, screaming out to someone in the hallway.

Silence.

The boring classes had given Cloud something he needed – time to think about Sephiroth.

The boring classes had given Cloud something else he needed – a strange version of peer approval.

Much to his surprise, he had a pre-cemented reputation as a 'funny' guy. His public humiliation had registered as an act of a class clown. When he had walked into all four different classrooms, there were four completely different groups of people that were happy to see him. No matter what he said, people were cracking up. And when he really did try to be funny, they were rolling in the aisles. At first, Lifetime of Ridicule made him feel as though they were just laughing at him. But they weren't.

It was odd though. Since when was he funny? Cloud knew the way he sounded and communicated was a little different. First of all, he was raised by a batshit crazy woman. Second, he was from an entirely different place, accents happen. Third, he was gay, and obviously so. That is the recipe for chuckles. He had honestly been expecting a lot less chuckling and more fists of bigoted fury.

But more than his flamboyant way of talking, the attitude adjustment had taken place. Even the awkward situation in swim class turned out to be a riot for everyone, including himself. True, it was embarrassing. But walking out of the locker room in a little red speedo to meet rambunctious laughter was really … fun. He simply had snapped the waistband and told them all not to be jealous.

Even if the entire school were to go against him tomorrow, he was not going to let himself be pushed down into the role of the sad outcast. It wasn't going to happen anymore. He really had changed. Accepting that fact had forced the world to accept it.

Unusual he was, outcast he was not.

He opened up Cam's laptop.

The first thing he did was type up an email to his mom. He told her he was sorry, but he was way too lazy to write a proper letter, or locate a phone. He retold the entire seminar, the most embarrassing moment of his life, and that the night ended with a drunken party and a CD from his beloved. He wrote about his classes, including the incredible story about Seph's act of heroism, and the borrowed speedo. He told her he was going to decide what to send back to Seph, and that he loved her.

The computer was only light in the slowly darkening room, he lightly tapped the keys: P.S. Momma… Am I an idiot?

Done. Sent.

Then he plugged in his Mp3 player and went about the decision.

It had already been partially made. This was not to be a single song. This was going to be a musical adventure.  
What made the decision so difficult was that they couldn't just be rowdy throw up anarchy punk songs. He didn't want the music to enter Sephiroth's ears and go into his brain to be read as noise. He wanted Sephiroth to like the songs. To want to have his way with a certain blonde to these songs. They had to mean something.

Before putting the CD into the laptop tray, he took a sharpee and after several minutes of deep thought, bravely wrote: 'For only Gen. S., from C.S.'

Cloud drug over the first song to go on the CD. Hey - The Pixies. The perfect introduction. A little forward maybe, but this was no time for cowardice. He wanted Sephiroth's attention.

The second song. Be Good To Me - Anal Orgasm, number ten on the greatest record of all time. Maybe a little rough for Sephiroth's indie loving ears, but the song always made Cloud think of kick dancing with him. And there was a slow moment in the middle where Benjy begged, "I'm yours, so please … be good to me." And it was cute.

The third. Publish My Love - Rogue Wave. Oh this fucking song. How many nights had he laid in his bed in Nibelheim and listened to this, bawling his lonely blue eyes out? "Whip me, but don't beat me … " That line got him every single time. Just knowing Sephiroth would listen to it … maybe thinking about him, too?  
It made Cloud's eyes water a little.

Fourth. Do You Realize? – The Flaming Lips. The first soft line was, "Do you realize you have the most beautiful face?" And speaking of Sephiroth's face, this was one of the songs that put him to sleep on the car drive to Midgar, and into that wonderful cat nap dream.  
He sighed, a little tear running down his cheek.

One more makes five. Orgasm Addict – The Buzzcocks. He couldn't resist. It might not have been romantic, but Sephiroth had to hear it, it was a classic. He would either laugh or be completely embarrassed, and Cloud didn't know which one he'd prefer to see.

For a moment he hesitated.

Fuck that! Burn baby, burn.

-.-.-.-.-

Cloud knocked on the door of the SOLDIER house.

No answer. It was almost dark, he hoped Zack hadn't left already.

He knocked again, louder, and hit the buzzer, "Zaaack, it's Cloooud."

He finally came to the door, talking on his cell phone. He waved and motioned for Cloud to come inside, listening to whoever was talking on the other end.

Zack was a damn hot man. He had on only those loose blue SOLDIER pants, and the edges of what looked like tighty-whities peeking over the top. Cloud couldn't help but smell him as he passed him by through the doorway.

"But … Oookay … Yeah … I'm getting ready to leave." He was saying softly as he walked into the kitchen. He opened the fridge, obviously having no intention of going anywhere anytime soon.

Cloud pointed to the phone and mouthed 'Who?'. Zack mouthed 'My bitch' and did a yapping motion with his hand.

"I'm sorry buttercup, really. You know I love you, right? Let's not hurt each other with words." Zack said agonizingly. A pause, then he burst out laughing.

Okay, Zack was hot, but he'd be an insufferable boyfriend.

Cloud sat up on the kitchen counter, drumming his fingers and watching him leisurely pour two bowls of cereal. Zack cracked open a beer and handed it to him. The whole time his girlfriend was shouting loud enough that even Cloud could hear her.

"Please … Can you just hold on for a moment? I need to take a shit. Call me back then … Oh here!" Zack rolled his eyes and smashed the hot cell phone to Cloud's ear and departed. On the other end, there was the sound of furious keyboard typing.

"And another thing in case you forgot, you've slowly but surely made off with every decent pen I have. Now I'm sittin' here with a fuckin' ballpoint piece of shit. Tell me you're bringin' at least one back, don't talk to me about some stupid ass movie. Your hype is gonna kill it anyways, I don't even wanna see it anymore."

Cloud felt his place in the universe more acutely in that moment than he had ever felt it before. He really was just a tiny gay speck on Earth, which was a tiny speck in the solar system, which was a tiny speck in the grand scheme of life in comparison to the person whose voice was ringing in his ears on the other end of the line.

"Sephiroth?"

The typing abruptly stopped. "Who is this?"

" … Cadet Cloud Strife, Sir," He answered slowly, biting his lips.

The previously drawling voice went sharply militant, "You should get into the habit of announcing who you are when you pick up a phone. This was a private call between a General and a First Class SOLDIER."

Cloud jumped down from the counter, "Tell me what your pen looks like, I'll find it for you, sir!"

The typing slowly picked back up, and the voice softened, "Don't bother yourself with it … Why am I talking to you?"

"Sorry I'm um … " C'mon, get with it! Where was that flirtatious person in the locker room? " … Zack threw the phone at me and left a second ago. He gave me your CD last night … "

A snort, "Oh? Zack actually remembered something?" The typing was feverish again.

Cloud laughed softly, "Yeah, he did! I'm actually here dropping off one I made for you…" The words were laced with naked adoration.

There was no response, only a pause in typing, the double click of a mouse, then back to more typing.  
He ran his hand over his hair, wishing to God he could see the man. Was he smiling? Did he even care? Was he … Pissed? Zack said he wasn't but … "General, I didn't offend you did I?"

"You'd know if you did," It wasn't gruff, but it wasn't playful. It wasn't anything, they were just words.

"Yes sir," A piece of reality sunk in … He'd be dead if he had offended this man. That reality … Hurt.

'I want him', Cloud realized more surely than ever. This was a real voice, and a real, solid man went with it. An imperfect yet deadly man. Sephiroth was capable of making mistakes, of hurting him in ways that he probably wasn't even aware of. He could rape Cloud with a disapproving look. He could kill him with a turn of his back. Sephiroth could break his heart so damn easily. Another piece of reality: It was already too late. It was already his.

Cloud let out an excited little breath, then covered his mouth when he realized it could have been heard.

Cloud usually wasn't a phone kind of person.

Sephiroth sighed slightly in response, sending a prickle into Cloud's ear, "… Did you like the song?"

"I loved it," It came out hushed and heavily accented.

"Did it answer your question?"

"Mmmhm … You're an indie guy," Cloud said slowly. He could feel a grin appearing on his face.

The sound was catching, because there was a clear smile in Sephiroth's voice now, "I've been called a lot of things, but that is definitely a new one."

"Mm! It's a good thing!" Cloud laughed.

The typing stopped again, "Well, what kind of guy are you?"

" … Maybe you'll find out," Cloud's heart was hammering, and he bit down on his thumb.

"I suppose I will."

Blue eyes fluttered closed involuntarily.

Sephiroth started to say something else but the phone was jerked out of his hand, "Okay I'm back. A pen has been located, and is in my pocket, from which I will place gingerly into your pen c- … What? … Oh, I know he is. Cloud, where's the CD for Seph?"

Cloud pulled it out of his messenger bag in a wild heartbeat.

"Amendment, I will place the pen gingerly into the proper pen cozy, and the Music Club for Seph and Cloud CD dead center of your desk … Yes sir. My mind is a steel trap, I never forget anything," Zack snapped the cell phone shut. "Phew! Now that that's over!" He picked up his cereal bowl and padded into the empty common room.

Cloud took a long moment before following. His organs were wreck and his cock wasn't sure what to do with itself.  
A conversation with the General.

Only since his change in the bathroom two weeks ago had anything remotely positive come from his efforts to get something he wanted. Even though he had slipped up and acted like a whiney bitch last night, things might be working out. He wanted to be different, he was getting there. He wanted to be a SOLDIER, he was on his way. He wanted friends, now he had them. He wanted a man, but not just any.

His mind drifted back to the songs that were on the CD. Jesus Christ help him, they were all love songs. The last bit of reality sunk in. The General was about to receive a love CD from a first year student that had just flirted on the phone with him. It could be perfect, or it could land him out on his ass.

'Please love me back, Seph,' he wished silently, sucking in air and blowing it out.

"Where is everybody?" Cloud finally asked, picking up his beer and cereal and heading into the common room where Zack was draped over a couch.

"They all split halfway through the damn day! I had to stick around. Besides, nothing waiting for me back at HQ but work. Soooooo," He spooned Lucky Charms into his mouth and munched away. "How was your first day? You tired?"

"Shit yes!"

"You gonna make it?"

Cloud spooned some cereal into his mouth and washed it down with beer, "I can't not. I have to. I'll make myself."

"That's the attitude! And hey, it's really not that hard," Cloud delivered a long look, but Zack shrugged, "It isn't! Do your schoolwork, put your best effort into training, and before you know it you'll be there. These years fly by like crazy."

Cloud looked at him. Their little friendship was one of those strange right place, wrong time events. It had been almost instantaneous back in Nibelheim, and Cloud was surprised that it had actually carried over. Usually when someone said 'I'll look you up', it meant nothing. But then again, Cloud wasn't hard to miss what with the seminar fiasco.

But … Still.

Zack looked back with cereal filled cheeks and smiled. Cloud imagined the feeling was like having a big brother. A really, really hot big brother. Eww.

Cloud smiled, "Hey … This is going to sound weird, but don't you feel like we've known each other for like, ever?"

"You were my little sister in a past life," He responded without skipping a beat.

Blonde eyebrows shot up. Dark ones remained neutral.

" … How do you know?"

"I dunno. I can like, remember … Other stuff sometimes," He knocked back half of a beer in several long gulps. Cloud got the distinct vibe that the subject was closed.

Zack belched with a smile and continued flipping through the channels. An easy grin consumed Cloud's face and he relaxed back into the couch next to his hot big brother.

They watched cartoons in an extremely chill silence until Cloud began having trouble keeping his head up. He had lost the battle and was lying back with his chin against his chest, dozing, when he felt Zack gently rub his shoulder.

Cloud groaned and looked at the time, "I feel so lame, it's not even late."

"Today's the first day. Pretty soon you'll get used to waking up early and getting abused all day long."

"I'm sure I will," Cloud stretched. "I guess I'm gonna get going."

"Peace out, little one. I should head back, too. God forbid Seph doesn't get a stupid pen by tonight."

Cloud put on his messenger bag, "Where the hell was it at, anyways?"

Zack shrugged, "I honestly don't know what fucking pen he's crying about. I was gonna just stop at the store."

Cloud thought. Then dug through his bag, "Give him this one! Please!" It was a black gel pen with the least amount of bite marks. The General was apparently very anti-ballpoint.

"Good thinking, that way I can blame you. Cloud made off with your good pen and all he left was this little shitty one. Seph'll come after you."

Cloud hoped to God he would.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

In the darkness, there was only the bluish glow of the computer monitor reflected off of thick, black, box frame glasses.

-Cloud Duffy Strife. Sixteen years, three months old. Five feet, four inches, Blonde/Blue, one-hundred and ten pounds at time of recruitment.

'One-hundred and ten fucking pounds?'

-Given direct order to gain weight. At time of briefing, covert weigh in, one-hundred and sixteen pounds, visible gain.

'We needed the recruitment numbers that bad this year?'

-Skill Observations – None of a combat nature were displayed, possible drumming aptitude.

… Drumming? C'mon Zack.

Shin-Ra, after all, was out to be the best in every way. Strife wouldn't know it until he became a SOLDIER, but from the moment he approached the tent to meet with Zack two weeks ago, he had been on tape. When he stood on the mat in front of the backdrop to have his picture taken, he had been weighed. When he touched the chair to sit down, he had been fingerprinted. When Zack rustled his hair, he was taking a sample.

Be the sneakiest, have the coolest toys, employ the best of the best. That was the Shin-Ra way. But nobody was kidding themselves. The classes of new recruits were getting smaller every year. But this was just pathetic. This was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Strife was … This kid was …

-First recruit from Nibelheim in over a decade.

This kid was fucking out there. Nervous maybe, he seemed weightless, like a leaf that had blown into the camera's field of vision, ready to blow away again at any moment. Enormous blue eyes were darting everywhere, turning around in the middle of the tent to see everything, shocking blonde hair moving like feathers with the slightest of head movements. The hair, it was …

Distracting.

And something was also all wrong with the way Strife stood. For some strange reason, he kept all his weight was on his left knee, curving the right hip. Even when he walked, the emphasis was still always on the left side, the right following along behind it smoothly. Not a swagger, it was …

Also very distracting.

'A back injury, maybe.'

"But it's like a … thing. Do I need to keep my face neutral?" Asked a tinnier version of Strife's voice on the tape, the charmingly clipped Nibelheim accent rolling off his tongue as plain as day.

"You're supposed to smile. For the birdie?" Came Zack's voice from off camera.

There was a silent pause and then Strife crinkled up with laughter. Zack scolded him and told him to keep still while the picture printed. At that nervous, unmoving moment, an x-ray had been taken, searching his body for any attempt at a concealed weapon, or any latent defects.

-No musculature or bone abnormalities.

So it's not a back injury …

"I look good anyways!" Cloud seemed to cry in defense on the monitor.

Zack briefed him quickly about uniforms, what was to be expected of him on the first day of classes, and basic rules. Then they sat down for the psychological analysis that Strife didn't even know was occurring. It was amazing to see the ease in which Zack constructed a conversation about of a script, especially to someone who regular conversation never came to easily.

"So why the hell are you doin' this anyways? What's so great about being a SOLDIER?" Zack had asked.

It was clear that the blue eyes were thinking. As they thought, Strife began to drum on his thighs. The long fingers were just beginning to make out a distinct rhythm when he stopped and said, "I want to do something with my life. I want to … Make everyone proud of me. Ya know?"

-Family – Mother/April Strife No father.

"But aren't you sad to leave your friends?" Zack had asked softly.

This question made the boy drum harder while he thought, then stopped to say, "I'll make friends in Midgar."

"Yeah, you will! You've already made at least one!" Zack had sweetly pointed out.

Joy washed over the boyish features.

-Friendless, not of the local climate, eager to be apart of a group, easy to establish loyalty.  
"But what about your girlfriend?"

"Oh I … "The boy shook his head slowly while rapping a beat with his knuckles on the chair between his legs.

-Homosexual, slightly socially awkward, probable target for hazing, suggest to be put on rape watch, suggest periodic testing for STDs.

The notes Zack had taken about Strife were so heartless, so impersonal, so fucking Shin-Ra. But he knew his friend better than that. Zack was enjoying the kid's offbeat presence. Sure enough, after the interview process was complete, Zack allowed Strife a full two hours more of personal, inane conversation regarding nothing of importance at all. The boy drummed and listened, then spoke. Drummed and listened, then spoke.

Drum, listen, speak.

Laugh.

Drum, listen, ask a question.

Smile.

After a while they quit drumming, and instead his untrained, absent minded fingers brushed into his blonde hair, parting some across his forehead, then running high up into a completely vertical spike. They traveled down his jaw and over his collar bone … Under the straps of the shirt he was wearing … Over his hip and into his pocket … And back up to pull at his bottom lip in thought.

In the dark room, white eyebrows furrowed over the thick black frames of his glasses.

At one point Zack gave him gum. Cloud chewed it until it was soft, then began pulling the pink substance from between his teeth, wrapping it around his index finger then sucking it off.

His thumb hovered over the stop button for two hours, but the he watched every last moment.

Sephiroth was hard.

A/N  
1-Songs in italics are real.

2-I was appalled to learn that some people don't know what Chubby Bunny is. Have you never been to Girl Scout camp? Chubby Bunny is a game you play where you put one marshmallow in your mouth and say "Chubby Bunny". Then you put another one in. "Chubby Bunny". Then you keep going and count how many marshmallows you can fit and still be able to say it. It sounds pretty stupid but trust me – Good times will fucking roll.

3-Okay, Cloud's voice and accent. It's completely open to interpretation. Don't let it distract you, but I personally imagine it to be softly Scottish (Edinburgh). I know, I know. Tifa dresses like Dolly Parton, and almost everything else gives the impression that Cloud's a redneck, but make a little love to the notion of him being a Euro trash soccer hooligan instead. And the Midgar accent is something similar to Philadelphian.

4-Thank you again for the reviews, they mean so much to me, sincerely.


	6. Cloud Gets Kissed

"I love … the killer song! I love … the killer song, the song … of underground!" Cloud sang in an accent that put Ricky Ricardo to shame. Every 'killer' was a 'keeler'.

He meandered around campus after breakfast in a neon yellow t-shirt that made him and his blonde hair look positively radioactive. People actually squinted when they looked at him in the sunlight. Bottomed off with dangerously low riding black jeans and his combat boots, he looked like a happy, singing little bee.

Saturday mornings like these were nice. Lazy. Chill.

Lonely.

It had been a month. He hadn't seen Zack since the night he dropped off Seph's CD. And he hadn't heard anything from his beloved.

'Such is the life of a military wife.' Cloud smiled to himself. The school newspaper had little articles about Sephiroth almost daily, which he always took the time to try to read. He was always jet setting somewhere. Making extremely important, like, statements. Speaking at functions … Getting caught by the camera at a funeral, in a suit, holding a fallen SOLDIER's crying little four-year-old girl. Yeah, Cloud had clipped that picture.

So, Sephiroth was just too busy to return his musical affections … But he was keeping the faith that he would someday soon. Soon.

"La La LALALA! La La LALALA!" He whistled with the music and flipped off someone who told him to pipe down.

Soon! Soon he would see that tall, gorgeous man waiting in front of his door to sweep him inside and make love to him. Soon he would get something in the mail … Another CD? An erotic love letter? An invitation to meet? Seph's address and a house key? Soon.

Maybe today, it was the first monthly mail day.

"La La LALALA!"

Cameron was always around, who he freely referred to as his best friend. But then again, when a gay man and a straight man call each other BFFs, there is always an underlying tension there. 'Oh fuckin' man dis one girl I knew, her tits was so … oh sorry … ' Or 'You know that guy, Cam, the one with the really round ass? … Ohh sorry … '. But it could all be laughed off. Psycho had even started sleeping with him, singeing little tiny holes in his sheets. And shallow conversation with the rest of the populace was never in short supply.

Especially with Skyyylar, whose obvious crush was flattering, but for some insane reason of the heart, not reciprocated. He was so damn cute but … He was bleach blonde, not silver haired. He was Cloud's height, not towering. No, thank you. Several times he had smoothly asked Cloud to go on a date downtown, to the movies, anywhere. Every time he had gently refused … But every invitation was getting more and more tempting.

'Seph, hurry up,' Cloud wished.

And he was just about getting used to the exhausting schedule. Running torture had turned into something he actually looked forward to. Boot Camp class had toughened up greatly, but always made him feel euphoric after, like a painful orgasm. The school classes were teaching him more than years of school in Nibelheim. Hand-to-Hand class was his favorite. He was delighted to find that even though he was shrimpy, he could still knock a bitch down. And getting bloody lips and facial bruises made him feel very manly in a Fight Club way, especially on Trash Talking Tuesdays, when they were allowed and encouraged to be unsportsman-like. Would anyone care for a sucker punch with a heaping side of yo mama? Order up, mother fucker!

"The King of the night! He's filled with the light! He's sexy! Crazy! His song stops and he's mine!" Cloud sang out, swinging open huge glass doors.

Everyone in the Shin-Ra Military Academy head office turned their heads to see what the ruckus was, but then groaned. It was the, now usual, sight of the blonde kid making noise. He shimmied across the lobby and up to a familiar face at the mail desk.

"What's your box number, Cloud?" Asked Monty, a towering, unamused, big boned redheaded second year boy. He had a class with the crazy Nibelheim kid and was well aware of his antics by now.

Cloud threw his head to the side and belted, "He's a DJ in my dreams! He's the king and I'm a queen! We love each other in the dark when we pussssshhh … play … or stop!" He pulled out one earphone, "Box 1102!"

He put it back in and drummed on the counter softly, dancing by himself while Monty dug around behind the desk.  
His mom always read her emails but preferred to correspond via snail mail for some obscure reason. He sent her a few updates over the past couple of weeks, and knowing her, there would be a reply today.

Monty came back with a small purple envelope. Yup, that was from mom. Unfortunately, that was the only mail. No other letters or perhaps packages containing rubber cast replicas of the General's anatomy. Oh well.

"What are you doing here anyways?" Cloud asked, sliding the envelope into his back pocket.

A heavy sigh, and the red head reached forward and pulled out the buds by the cord, "My name got drawn to be office bitch today. Again. On a Saturday!"

"Is it really so bad?"

Monty was stressing, bad, "I'm the glue of this office today, Cloud. Without me, who else would change the toilet paper in the bathrooms and restock the copier? Who would hand out mail? Who in this office would be able to reach the staple box on the top shelf of the supply closet? Tell me Cloud, who?"

A man in a green uniform stepped up to the desk and set down a huge stack of coffee carriers and boxes, "Delivery for Shin-Ra."

Monty grimaced, eyes darting around, "Please, please verify. Coffee is like sex to these people, they will literally tear me apart if it's wrong."

He pushed up his long uniform sleeve to read pen marks on his arm, and the delivery guy took out a pad to rattle off the order information, "Four Cinnamon Lattes for Pjat, Craig, Georgette, and heavy on the foam for Rhonda. A hot chocolate for Christine. Chilled ten shot for Sephiroth. Green tea sugar free tea juice smoothie for Kikko. Three white raspberry mocha fraps for Mari, Lynn, and Frank. And three dozen cream cheese muffins."

He nodded, paid the man, and turned to take the coffee carriers.

Now, Monty easily had about two feet and one hundred and fifty pounds on Cloud, but jumped back like a teacup Chihuahua when he saw the absolutely feral look on his blue eyed face. Long fingers were digging into the counter, and he was grinning ear to ear, little white teeth ready to tear flesh apart.

"Need help passing out coffee, Monty?" He asked dangerously.

" … Sure."

Cloud seized the small, cold cup that said 'Seph' in green marker, "Where does this one go?"

"Th-third floor. Conference room D. Knock twice."

Cloud took the drink, a straw, and two muffins in a napkin.

He bolted to the elevators like a quarterback.

Finally! Finally! After two years of hardcore crushing, after a month of intense waiting, a chance! A chance to see him, to talk to him, to be up close to him! To smell him! To touch him! To give him all the love in the universe! Finally!

Cloud bounced happily into the elevator and pressed the third floor button multiple times. Then he hit the door close button for good measure, blatantly cock blocking a woman who was trying to enter, and collapsed back into the rail in rapture.

'His lips are going to touch this.' Cloud thought dreamily at the seductive beverage. It swished around chocolately.

Mmm … He hadn't had sweets for quite some time … And chocolate was almost better than an orgasm. Chocolate plus Sephiroth's lips was an orgasm.

'Oh, what the hell?'

He popped up the lid and carefully not disturbing the puff of whipped cream, took a small sip of what was surely ambrosia for a god to have ordered it. The cold liquid hit his tongue like red tide, and he shuddered severely as he swallowed it down. Wide eyed and groaning loudly in misery, he searched the label for a clue. He had missed that part of the exchange between Monty and the delivery boy, and was hoping not to find gasoline and death as the main ingredients.

'10 shot' it said it green marker. Cute, Sephiroth. Ten fucking shots of cold espresso.

The elevator lurched open with a ding. Cloud rinsed his mouth out at a nearby water fountain, and then walked softly down the hall.

Conference Room A … The door was open, dark inside.

Conference Room B … The door was closed, voices coming from inside.

Conference Room C … The door was open, sound of a janitor vacuuming echoing from inside.

Conference Room D … The door was closed … Man of his dreams inside.

Grinning like a fool, he gave two sound knocks. He wasn't exactly nervous … He was eager, anxious … Slightly aroused. He was prepared to do anything he had to do to win over whoever was on the other side of the door.

"Yes?" Came a surprisingly young, but distracted voice from inside.

"Coffee!" Cloud called sweetly through the door.

"Come on in."

He took a deep breath and opened the door quietly.

The almost pitch-black room disoriented him at first; it was so massive, and so empty. He had been expecting a meeting or something. There were two big oval tables with empty leather chairs all around them. Calm, generic artworks on the walls. The room's only light source was a huge screen that had the Shin-Ra logo projected onto it, shimmering and spinning the way corporate logos loved to do.

He let the door close gently with his fingertips and took a few steps into the room, scanning every empty chair.

"I know … " Sephiroth said slowly and quietly, " … You aren't?"

Cloud felt like he was insane. He heard him … He sounded so close … But where? … All the chairs were empty …  
He turned around.

On the floor, right next to the door, sat a beautiful man.

He was leaning up against the wall, his phone cradled on his shoulder. One knee was up, supporting a notebook that he was scribbling in with one hand, while the other was buried in his radiant hair. It had to have been freshly washed that morning, it was practically alive, spilling in front of his face and over his shoulders, pooling all around him on the carpet. The movie theater-like lighting of the room made it seem like the soft color of moonlight.

'Normal people clothes,' Cloud dumbly thought.

Black pinstripe pants, but not stuck up or tacky. They fit like jeans, the pant leg on the propped knee riding up slightly to reveal the laces of scruffy combat boots. Pushed up to his elbows were the long black sleeves of a soft and fuzzy looking ribbed turtleneck. Cloud noticed that, in normal people clothes, Sephiroth looked much thinner than he had thought. Every limb was long and lean. Naked imaginings would have to be slightly readjusted.

Cloud looked again to his face, more specifically, his favorite part of his face. Those green eyes were dark and narrowed, and gazing off to the side, listening to whatever hateful person was on the other end of the line. In pictures, they were always such an impossibly vibrant emerald color, but now they were a dim, dusty aqua. They didn't even exude that sexy, cool confidence, but …

Sephiroth's chest moved up slowly, and he covered his mouth with the back of his hand as he stifled a yawn, white eyebrows turning up almost innocently.

… Absolute exhaustion.

'Honey … You're sleepy,' Cloud helplessly thought, completely out to sea with adoration.

Then he remembered that he had the antidote. He took a few small steps to Sephiroth, and knelt down in front of him.

Weary green eyes floated slowly from where they had been looking off into space to Cloud.

With almost trembling hands, he quietly spread out a napkin on the floor within Sephiroth's reach, and laid the muffins on it.

"I've been talking to you for too long." Sephiroth said to the caller bluntly. He snapped the phone shut and let it drop to the floor.

Cloud froze. His heart hammered.

Sephiroth leaned forward and took the cup from Cloud's fingers.

"Thank you," He mumbled, sounding somewhat relieved. In three harsh motions, he pounded the straw against his thigh, forcing it to burst out of the top of its paper wrapping.

Cloud sat back on his calves in astonishment.

Sephiroth's white, feline-like teeth captured the straw, and plunged it deep down into the swirl of whipped cream. Something flexed in his throat and the dark liquid crept slowly up, up, up the straw. The usually chiseled cheeks puffed out a bit, and he moved his head back, letting the straw squeeze free from between his softly puckered lips. His long throat flexed again as he swallowed, wincing only slightly with a soft, deep sound coming from his chest.

The stocks in Cloud's First Bank of Spank plummeted. Sephiroth finally held a complete monopoly of all things sexy. And to think, Rufus Shin-Ra himself had paid him an eager visit just yesterday in the locker shower. How would he break the news to such a wealthy man that his assets had just been rendered completely worthless?

"Cloud Strife," Sephiroth said after he swallowed. Hearing his full name snapped him out of his trance.

"Hello, Sephiroth," He heard himself purr. Well, maybe not totally out of his trance.

"Hello," Sephiroth answered back politely. He turned to his writing again, and took another slow, erotic drink. "Thanks."

"You are very welcome, Sir."

Green eyes flicked to him. Cloud was beaming uncontrollably.

"Is there something you need?"

"No, Sir."

Sephiroth, trained to hear lies like a dog was trained to sniff out cocaine, tilted his head momentarily, and then went back to work.

After a few heartbeats with nothing but the sound of Sephiroth's pen moving across the paper, Cloud lurched up to his knees and off of the floor. He felt that it was the polite time to leave but …

"Sephiroth?"

The green eyes looked up.

"Did Zack remember to give you your CD?" Cloud's shoulders scrunched up a bit, hoping that Zack didn't forget like he usually seemed too.

"He did," Sephiroth scratched out something on his paper, then continued to write.

"Did you listen to it?"

"We can talk about it some other time," He said softly, and it sounded kinda like, 'Get the fuck out, please'.

Cloud winced at what he was about to do, "But … Did you? Listen to it?" He was going to harass this poor tired man, on purpose.

The green eyes looked up again, "Yes, I did."

"Did you like it?"

Sephiroth stared into space for several long moments, completely blank. Then shook his head as if he had just woken up, "I'm sorry, I can't even think at this moment. We'll talk later, okay?"

Cloud was completely charmed by the gentle pleading in his beloved's voice, but wasn't going anywhere. "It's just that it's been a while. I was wondering … If you wanted to keep it up. The um, the CD exchange thing. I really want to. I-"

"I'm busy. Later on," Sephiroth's words were becoming clipped.

Cloud wondered wildly if it was going to be necessary for the General to call security and have him physically removed from the room. It would take the entire SOLDIER fleet. It would take a tank. They would have to call a priest and arrange an exorcism.

Sephiroth continued to write furiously.

Cloud made a small, sad sound in his throat.

The green eyes snapped up, now clearly annoyed, "I'm tired. I have to get this shit done, and get on a plane in an hour and a half. You are dismissed."

Knees trembled, and words tumbled, "I can help you? Is there anything, I could do for you!" Some sort of instinct kicked on in Cloud's head when he heard Sephiroth express discomfort, and it was a desperate desire to take care of him in any way he could. By all means, get that man to bed!

Sephiroth exhaled in impatient disbelief. He closed his eyes and took several ungraceful gulps of his coffee.  
"See this?" He demanded, referring to a sizeable pile of papers beside him, "Don't read them. There's a rubber stamp on the copier. Stamp them, then copy them, then shred the originals."

"Where's the copier?" Cloud asked, surprised at his calm articulation, but was beyond embarrassed at his motor mouth and was running on autopilot.

Sephiroth seemed to be confused by the question, "It's … " He stretched himself to sit up tall, peering around the room.

He groaned and pushed up off the floor.

He swallowed eagerly. Sure, he was bashful for making Sephiroth have to get up … But… Cloud hadn't realized how tight his clothes were while he was sitting. There was a split second flash of his bare lower back when his hair fell forward over his shoulders as he leaned over, collecting his things off the floor. The drink, the muffins, the notebook, a calculator, a thick book that resembled a phonebook, and he jerked the strap of a laptop bag over his neck.

He straightened up with a sigh, some of his hair swishing back into its normal position, and left the room clearly expecting to be followed. Cloud snatched up the little paper pile and was hot on his heels.  
Sephiroth's walk was a tall, graceful, long legged march, and free from the long coat that hid it at the seminar. From behind, at Cloud's angle, the white inner linings of his pockets were visible, and moved in a jerky, hypnotizing up and down motion, as his beautiful hair and black laptop bag bounced against his hot, grabbable …

'NOO! STOOOP IT!' Cloud shrieked inside his head.

He was steadily creeping into the red. If he wasn't more careful, a situation involving six and a half angry inches of pure Nibelheim fury could develop. 'I'm acting like a grody subway pervert.' He scolded himself, holding the papers in front of his crotch as he followed.

They suddenly stopped, and he watched Sephiroth slide a long hand into his back pocket and withdraw an ID card. He didn't have time to make out the picture or any details on it before it was slid through a scanner next to the door and shoved back in. Sephiroth held the door open for Cloud and flipped on the light.

Big blue eyes flicked everywhere, expecting some sort of super top-secret bunker with monitors and buttons and cool shit like that. But the smallish room was plain and white, had a few large copiers, a row of shredders, a couple of vending machines, and a couch. Yawn.

"Okay … " Sephiroth said slowly, putting both hands on a copier. He plucked one of the papers out of the pile hiding Cloud's indecisive boner and laid it facedown, squinting at the little touch screen panel. He reaching into his bag and withdrew the most absolutely hideous, atrocious, thick black-framed pair of glasses Cloud had ever seen in his life. When they were slid onto the pretty mans scowling face, he thought he might die from embarrassment for his beloved. Just simply keel over. The General was unfashionable?

But then Sephiroth leaned down to him, thick black lashes and smoldering green eyes gazing through the nerdy frames, "Just copy at 70. Make sure you stamp them."

The evacuation siren went off in Cloud's tight pants.

He could see himself being roughly bent over a lab table with Bunsen burners and beakers filled with colored fluids and open textbooks, getting fucked hard and forced to recite the periodic table. So that's what they meant by geek chic.

And who was he kidding? He was rocking day glow yellow.

Sephiroth retreated and instead of leaving, fell heavily onto the couch. Cloud turned his head to peek. He had laid down, pulled out the notebook and returned to scribbling noisily in it. One knee was up again to support the notebook, the other long leg was hanging lazily off the couch.

Cloud turned back to the papers. It wasn't difficult to not read them, they were all just Sephiroth's chicken scratch handwriting all over the page, and nonsensical math equations. He stamped the first one. It was red and it declared "OFFICIAL SHIN-RA DOCUMENTATION". Yeah, it was official, all right. He made a pile of originals to be destroyed, and a pile of the freshly baked copies. Six and a half inches calmed down to about two. Phew.

Sephiroth let out a long, drawn out yawn.

"Espresso isn't kicking in yet?" Cloud asked. He felt a little bit wired from his tiny sip.

He only made an irritated little 'mmrmph' sort of noise in response.

Cloud smiled. It might have been slightly awkward, but he was still spending actual time with his sleepy beloved.  
The copier was whirring pleasantly. Sephiroth's sloppy left hand was scritching and scratching across the paper. There came the sound of a straw gargling on the bottom of an empty cup. It was a little rhythm. He began to tap it out with his knuckles on the copier.

"Cloud Strife! Drop and give me fifty!" That evil fucking female cackle. That voice that haunted his nightmares.

Almost without thinking, Cloud fluidly dropped to his hands on the floor.

"What are you doing in a faculty copy room?" Nurse Rhonda barked as Cloud began pumping up and down.

Before he could explain himself, there came a low growl, "He's with me, cunt."

Shocked to all hell, he stopped his pushups and looked up at Sephiroth. To his terror, the General had gotten up from the couch, and hurled his notebook on the floor. Nurse Rhonda marched straight up to him.

'Oh snap!' Cloud screamed in his head.

But instead of killing each other, they threw their arms around each other.

"Sephy Cocoa Pop!" She squealed, her arms around his neck.

"Fucking bitch!" He growled, lifting her momentarily up off the floor.

To Cloud's utter astonishment, Nurse Rhonda roughly grabbed Sephiroth's delicate, gorgeous, smiling face, smooshed his cheeks together, and planted a loud kiss right on his mouth.

They immediately began questioning each other on their whereabouts, it had been months, apparently, months! Why wasn't Sephiroth at the annual art show? Why wasn't Nurse Rhonda at the new term seminar? Why didn't Sephiroth attend Julie's baby shower? Why the fuck didn't Julie call and tell him the shower had been rescheduled? Well, she left the message with his secretary. Someone was getting fired. Rhonda couldn't stay long. Oh noooo.

They sat back on the couch, completely lost in their own little world.

Cloud's eyes narrowed. With her hair down and her not sweaty and screaming through a bullhorn she was … Rather lovely. She was wearing an athletic pullover hoodie and jean Bermuda shorts, and men's sandals. Okay, she's a lovely dyke. Cloud felt something like relief, all the affectionate nothings were just friendly … Right?

She pinched his cheek and he flicked her forehead. She punched his arm and he elbowed her in the side.

'Okay, breathe, they're just friends.'

Slightly embarrassed, he picked himself up off the floor and contemplated leaving. But seeing Sephiroth acting cute and conversational … Well, Cloud always had been a nosey little faggot. He turned back to the copier and listened intensely to their conversation, especially when Nurse Rhonda said: "You don't look so good, sweetie. How many cals a day are you getting?"

Sephiroth grumbled, "Enough. Around Three thousand."

"Up it to three point five. You sleeping well?"

He lowered his voice. Cloud strained, trying to put his hearing on its tippy toes over the noise of the copier, 'They something me on something something makes me something something.'

Nurse Rhonda wasn't concerned about keeping quiet at all, "What the fuck are you taking that again for?"

His voice lowered even more, 'Something something.'

"How long?" She demanded, almost frantic.

"I don't want to talk about me, damn it. I'm alright," He said with a tense smile in his voice. "How's Julie?"

"I'll tell you, when you tell me how long."

A sigh, "Maybe about an hour."

"I'm gonna raise hell."

"Don't. Do not."

"You are twenty-two-years-old, all grown up now, kiddo. You should be able to talk to him yourself. But since you won't, I will."

Cloud's eyes went wide. Twenty-two? TWENTY-TWO! Every single magazine said he was twenty-five!

He stole a glance at the two of them on the couch. Blue eyes squinted at Sephiroth's face. Sitting next to Rhonda he looked … Very young.

'HE IS TWENTY-TWO! PRAISE GOD! Only six years apart … Not nine! …'

But then Cloud slowly blinked and his eyebrows furrowed slightly. He hadn't gotten a good look at him outside of the dimly lit conference room. His beloved looked young but also … Sick. Very sick. Had he been so wrapped up in his attraction that he didn't notice how ghostly pale Sephiroth was? His gorgeous lips were badly chapped. His unusually dim eyes were dark pink around the edges. It was true that he was thinner than Cloud had thought …

Maybe almost too thin. The only part of him that looked remotely healthy was his hair.

Sephiroth's eyes flicked to Cloud, who quickly turned around.

His voice lowered again, and this time Nurse Rhonda somehow managed to lower her own. They murmured back and forth, she sometimes hissing words, he sometimes growling them. Slowly they returned to a normal volume.

"Well, her sonograms were a couple weeks back … It's not an it. It's a them."

Sephiroth said something softly.

"One's a boy! That's all we know!"

Cloud heard more kisses, then the soft sounds of hugging and promises to call. A heat rose up in the pit of his stomach. Ow, jealousy.

Suddenly he felt a rough hand pull back his hair, and he was surrounded, "Why on Earth are you cooping up my student on a Saturday?" she asked, grinning down at him.

She ripped open the lid of the copier, mid copy, and put her own paper down.

"I'm not cooping anybody up. He offered to do all my work for me."

Cloud turned to look up at him. Sephiroth was leaning against the hot, busy copier, arms crossed over his stomach, looking down at him with a boyish smile. Mmm! Under the weather maybe, but he was still sexy!

"Well, be good," Nurse Rhonda commanded to Cloud, taking her papers. She messed up blonde hair and tugged on silver, and was gone.

"You don't have to stay and do this, Cloud. You can go whenever you want."

"I'll stay."

Sephiroth pushed off the copier with a shrug, "Suit yourself."

They went back to the little rhythm of the copier and the chicken scratch.

Cloud went through the motions like a robot, and let his mind wander.

He replayed the way Sephiroth slightly crossed his eyes when Rhonda kissed him over and over. He recited the entire Little Mermaid song Under the Sea. Was Sephiroth okay? He thought about what it would be like to be a pro surfer. He recounted from sixteen to twenty-two, making sure it was only six years. When Sephiroth was in second grade, Cloud was crying in a crib. When Sephiroth was starting to jerk off, Cloud was learning to play soccer. When Cloud was starting to jerk off, Sephiroth was becoming a Sergeant in the military. In a perfect world, I Need You Tonight by INXS would come on over the intercom, Cloud would drop to his knees and crawl over to the General of the Shin-Ra army, and make him know how much he was loved. I need you toooniiight … Boomboomboombop … Because I'm not sleepin' … Boom boom … There's somethin' about – you – Seph … Boomboomboombop … That makes me sweeat. Boom de boom de boomboomboom!

"Why do you do that?" Sephiroth shouted out suddenly, laughing a little.

Cloud realized he had been tapping loudly on the copier, "I'm sorry, Sir!"

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes at him with a smile.

He seemed to be in a much better mood since letting the espresso marinate and having a little chit chat with his friend Nurse Rhonda. Cloud went into double time for him, quickly copying and quickly shredding everything in large chunks, putting a real effort into keeping his wandering hands still. Every so often Sephiroth would tear out a finished page of his notebook and slide it across the tile floor to him.

Cloud suddenly, in the light hearted mood of the room, felt his unwelcome depression lapping at his feet like a slow but steady tide. His heart no longer belonged to him. A month ago, it had been an exciting concept. Now, it was more like watching a hurricane on the horizon line. He truly loved that man on the couch, but he knew it was going to be next to impossible for it to work. How would he ever make the leap from being a student sucking up and making copies to … Someone to love? He could hear Sephiroth now.

"You actually think I'm gay, Cloud?"

"You actually think I'm single, Cloud?"

"Cloud, I'm gay and single and your little love CD was really cute but … You're just not my type at all."

"Seriously, stop trying to suck my cock, you're making me laugh. I'd rather masturbate alone in the shower with my hot ass self than have to suffer through your pathetic little attempts at pleasing me."

Cloud pouted.'I'm going to try!'

Besides, he wasn't such a terrible little catch. There are worse people to have wanting after you than a blonde haired, blue eyed cutie pie. He might not have been a gladiator, but he had everything he needed to get the job done. He might not have had the familiarity of Nurse Rhonda, but they really just met, he'd be grabbing that handsome face for kisses soon enough.

Cloud loved him, and wanted to take care of him. If that wasn't good enough for Sephiroth … Well, there's a lot to be said about roofies.

He laid the still warm pile of copies on the arm of the couch, next to Sephiroth's propped up head.

Sephiroth laid the notebook down on his chest and simply smiled up at him.

Sephiroth smiled a lot. In news pictures in the school paper, it was handsome and professional. On the cover of TimeWeek, it was confident and secretive. At the seminar, his smile had been small, tight, and a little confused. With Rhonda, it had been the wide, careless one of a friend. This was something different altogether … Sexy. What a shocker. Spending a little time with the man proved that just about every movement he made was dead sexy. But poor Cloud couldn't help it. Not when those smiling lips were chapped, but full, and oh so pillowy and kissable. He could see the crack in the center of his bottom lip clearly, almost feeling the roughness of it on his tongue.

And with him lying on the couch like that, long legs stretched out so invitingly, Cloud had to wonder where to put the quarter in for a ride. Subway pervert.

He helplessly smiled back, hoping that his own face would look half as alluring in those green eyes, "When do you have to get on your plane?"

Sephiroth looked up and over Cloud's shoulder, "Mm. Soon."

"Did you finish everything?" He asked with genuine concern.

"Close enough," Sephiroth answered, closing up the notebook and clicking his pen closed.

Cloud summoned up all of his courage, " … Do you have time to eat before you go?"

The corners of his mouth deepened and pulled the sexy smile farther out, "No."

Cloud nodded. Blue eyes dropped to the floor.

"What are you doing next weekend?" Sephiroth asked, sitting up and swinging his legs over in front of him.

Blue eyes shot up, "Absolutely nothing."

'Did that sound desperate?'

"Nothing? On Halloween?" Sephiroth asked curiously.

'Oh shit, it is Halloween. Play it off. Keep it real. Be honest.'

"I'm a nerd."

'Not that honest, stupid!'

Sephiroth rested his elbows on his knees, "Zack always plans some sort of thing … You're friends, right?"

"Yeah. I haven't heard from him in a while, though … "

"Mm. He's like me, fuckin' workin' all the time," Sephiroth yawned and blinked lazily.

'There it is!' Cloud thought, 'The Midgar accent.'

He rested his cheek against his hand and looked up, "I'm in town Saturday, a bunch of us are going out. You should come along."

Cloud gasped like a fish out of water, "Really?"

Sephiroth scratched the back of his head, "Well, if you want, that is. It might not be much fun for you. I'm sure they just want to go out to some bar."

He couldn't contain a tiny hop, "That sounds awesome! Are you sure?"

"Of course. But wear a costume," He warned. "I get to strip you naked if you don't."

Sephiroth went about collecting his things. He wasn't joking.

"O-ookie," The pink cheeked blonde finally answered, and winced at the Nibelheimness of it.

Sephiroth smiled broadly and stood up.

"Thank you again for your help," He said, looking down.

Cloud craned his neck and looked at him.

'Right about now would be a good time for my first kiss,' He informed Sephiroth telepathically.

Like clockwork, Sephiroth said, "There's something I want to give you."

Instead of slipping him some tongue, he dug through his bag for a moment. He took out a small, thin CD holder and unzipped it.

"I was planning on getting it to you sometime before I left town today, I know it's been a long time," He murmured, his long fingers flipped through, found the one they wanted and withdrew it. He looked at the underside unhappily.

"It's scratched," Sephiroth held it out like a pokeball.

Cloud poked his finger through the hole in the center and flipped it to take a look at the underside. He hiked an eyebrow. Atrocious.

"What can I say? It's been through a war."

War.

He tried hard to keep his cool, to hide how deeply moved he was to be holding such a thing. This was what a hero listened to. He turned it over to find that the other side had been designed to look like a retro fish tank.

"Touch Society," Cloud read quietly.

"They're the best. My favorite."

Cloud held the CD against his chest and looked up at him.

Sephiroth flipped through the case a couple more times and showed Cloud his own CD.

He grinned and counted off on his fingers, "Already knew the Pixies, but I was glad to hear them. Went out and bought the Anal Orgasm CD. I listened to Publish My Love a lot. Flaming Lips are just okay," and he exhaled almost sing songly said, "and Orgasm Addict was completely ridiculous. But it was my favorite."

Blue eyes narrowed hazily. That was nasty, filthy, dirty smut talk to a music fanatic.

"But, take care of that one. It's beat to hell, but I want it back."

Cloud nodded and rubbed it a little with his thumb. Some of the grime shifted.

"Hmm. Maybe I can do something." Cloud pressed his tongue against the reflective side of the CD. He tilted his head and ran it in a wide circular motion, getting the entire thing wet. Then he took the edge of his shirt and polished the CD gently. Some of the scratches were deep, but it actually helped a lot with the smudging.

He showed the fresh side to Sephiroth.

But he wasn't looking at the CD. Sephiroth was looking at him.

Okay, maybe he didn't have to tilt his head when he licked the CD clean. Maybe he didn't have to pull up his shirt quite so high.

Cloud smiled up at him sweetly.

'Kiss me!'

Sephiroth stood there for a few more moments before walking to the door.

"Next week," he said, and disappeared.

Cloud unlocked the door and let himself in, only to find yet another goddamn Cameron's clothes mess. Cam had more clothes than a drag queen. After a morning like that, the last thing he felt like doing was picking up after him.

He stumbled out of the bathroom wearing only boxers, "Help."

"No! Clean it yourself!"

"Not da mess. I need help." There was a scared look in the normally cocky brown eyes.

"What is it?" Cloud sighed, frisbeeing the purple envelope from his mother and Sephiroth's CD onto his bed, the only place in the room not covered in strewn garments.

"Well see dere was dis girl back in the neighborhood, Michele. Sweet to me, nice tits, cute as fuck. She um … "

Cloud smiled, "Do you have a date?"

Cam's arms went crazy, "Nooo! Hell no! She was just sayin' she like … Missed me or somethin'. She wants to go get a fuckin' pie tonight."

" … That's a date."

Brown eyes, normally huge, were completely round, "Help."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Queer eye me."

He burst out laughing, "Okay! I can do that. Hrm." He went to the clothes still on hangars in the closet and picked through them.

Then made a beeline for his own closet. Secretly, Cloud couldn't wait to play dress up. Cam was like a brother, but his body was incredible, and the past month of hard training only enhanced it. Cloud would have given his left nut to have thighs like his. He thumbed through his jeans and threw a pair on the bed, "Put those on."

"Cloud, these is too fuckin' little!"

"They're a size bigger than my usual. Try it, can't hurt."

The jeans were a dirty greenish wash, and as Cam zipped them up they hugged his hips low and tight. Cam usually did the baggy pants thing and it worked, but this looked amazing. Not wanting to scare him, he just nodded neutrally, "They look okay … Are they comfortable?"

"Yeah … I guesso." He turned around a little, looking down at himself. He pushed in the pockets that were sticking out, tugging the jeans even lower. In a perfect world, Cloud would have sent him on his date just like that. But the world was a flawed and unfair place, so that meant Cam had to put a shirt on.

"Put on a black t-shirt. One that fits, not hangs off of you. No curse words on it."

He did. The effect was perfect.

"Put on your white belt, and your uniform shirt over it, unbuttoned."

"I should wear da uniform out?"

Cloud smiled, "Women love a man in uniform. And it'll remind Michele that you're a little less … Shall I say available than you used to be. Get it?"

"Smart fucker!" Cam looked at himself approvingly in the bathroom mirror. Cloud starting to kick clothes back into the offending closet.

"Michele was sayin' dat like … Heh she might beat my ass if I don't kiss her or somethin'."

"Kiss her like she's never been kissed before," Cloud advised absent mindedly, hanging up the shirts before they wrinkled. He wanted to share his own big news, but felt that the timing was off. Cam seemed extremely fired up about his actual love life, last thing he needed to hear was more about Cloud's pretend one.

"Ya ever kiss a girl?"

"All the time," He said sarcastically.

"How about a guy?"

Cloud looked away, "Nope."

"Well, you's are like, kinda like … You're like a girl, right?"

Cloud, holding one of Cam's heavy metal shirts on a hangar, stopped cold."I'm like a man."

"No shit! I ain't tryin' to offend you's. But you's have kinda like a girl's fuckin' perspective on some stuff, right?"

"What are you trying to ask?"

"Well, if a guy kissed ya, how would you want him to work it?"

"Oh. Well … " This was something he'd put quite a bit of thought into, especially in the past twenty minutes. He put down the shirt and took a step toward Cam, who immediately went frigid.

"Don't fuckin' kiss me! Just tell me!"

"I'm not going to kiss you! I wouldn't want to waste it on your ugly fucking stupid sorry ass!" Sometimes the only way to put a straight man at ease is to insult him. Cam immediately relaxed and laughed.

Cloud walked up to him, "Okay I'm going to be you and you be Michele," he grabbed Cam's hard chest and said in a gruff Midgar voice, "Michele, I fuckin' loves ya tatas."

"I don't fuckin' talk like that!" When Cam said 'talk' it sounded like 'towalk'.

Cloud laughed, "Yes, you do. Alright, if you think she wants to kiss you, you have to be sure, right? So just touch her face," He cupped Cam's jaw gently, "And maybe do something with her hair," He twisted his fingers into Cam's chin length strands. "And maybe do something involving, but not engaging the lips," He brushed his thumb over Cam's bottom lip, pulling it down a bit, "And be gentle about it, if she doesn't kick off your dick, move in slowly … "

Cloud inwardly panicked as Cam actually leaned in, eyes narrowing, "Oh, Cloud … " He breathed sexily, " … I think ya just turned me into a homo … "

Cloud burst out laughing and shoved him away violently but Cameron grabbed him into a fierce hug, "Thanks."  
Without another word he shoved on his black converses, kissed Psycho on top of the head, and headed for the door.

"Hold it!" Cloud put a few spritzes of what Cam referred to as 'fagalicious fragrance' on both sides of his neck, "Did you use mouthwash?"

Cam nodded.

"Don't swear so much!"

Cam shrugged.

"And when you eat pizza, don't use garlic. And pay her a sincere compliment. And don't forget your wallet, you have to pay for everything unless she's a feminist."

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket slightly, showing that it was there. They smiled at each other and Cam left with a slam of the door.

Cloud sighed, shoveled the rest of Cam's clothes into the closet and leaned the door closed. He could deal with it himself later.

He pushed Psycho gently to the side and laid down on his bed. He picked up Sephiroth's CD and ran his lips thoughtfully over the rough scratches.

War.

It was so …

'… Romantic,' Cloud realized.

He pulled out Cameron's laptop and played it.

If a thrift store could sing, that's exactly what it would have sounded like. So, what's the equation here? Nerdy glasses … Plus espresso … Divided by black clothes … Multiplied by long hair … Plus indie music to the one hundreds power. If Sephiroth wasn't the General he'd probably be smoking on the corner downtown in polyester pants, scribbling screen plays instead of office work. Maybe in that simpler alternate universe Cloud would be down on that corner with him, pulling cigarettes out of his mouth to steal kisses, and being the Nordic punk muse for his crappy poetry.

'My indie guy,' He smiled.

He rolled dreamily to his side, and spotted the letter from his mom. He picked it up to open it. But then twirled it around.

He had quite a lot of … Ammunition. The music … The memories of this nice little morning … The crack in that bottom lip … If he waited, some of the details might get blurry. Room to himself … Hmm …

Psycho farted.

He rolled his eyes and sawed the envelope open with his finger. Inside was a note, and a smaller envelope. He read the note first.

'Cloud.

'No, you're not an idiot. Well, maybe for not wearing any fucking underwear, but hey, I won't judge. I'm glad you're getting along with your roommate, I want pictures.  
'Baby, I'd have more to say about your school but I need to tell you something.  
'Your father came here yesterday.'

Cloud read the sentence over and over.

'He came by with your step brothers.'

A small sound echoed in his throat.

'You know, I got rid of every picture of your dad and I really don't think that was right of me to do. He had blonde hair, and blue eyes too. But you really don't look like him at all, you favor me. Your brothers look like their mother, they had darker hair. They're fifteen, and thirteen.'

Cloud's lower lip trembled in anger.

'Your dad apparently has his own construction business. He wanted to expand to Nibelheim, and came by seeing if you wanted a job and to "reconnect". Recon-fucking-nect? Don't worry, Cloud. He has a brand new asshole where the old one used to be. But I made him and the boys stay for dinner. I told them all about you. Please, please, take it from me, kid. He's sorry that he missed out on you.'

Cloud's eyes watered in utter shock.

'And also take it from me that you didn't miss out on anything. He's not the man that I knew. He is nothing like me, or you. I regret that you never met your father. But I'll never regret having you all those years to myself. We did okay, right?'

He nodded silently, and read on.

'But he left this for you. I didn't open it, you see first. But I do expect a phone call telling me exactly what the son of a bitch had to say! So, please call me. I'll tell you anything else you want to know. Be good, and Godspeed on your little pathetic love life. I love you.'

He read the entire letter a second time and sighed.

Every single birthday was tinged with hope that he would call, show up, something would come in the mail, anything. Anything. Sometimes, even up until just a few years ago, on perhaps a Saturday, he would get the random notion that maybe his dad would finally be curious enough, finally have the time to see him.

But please believe, he was glad he wasn't there now that it had actually happened. He wasn't a quiet, weak boy waiting in the window. He was going to be a goddamn SOLDIER. His son was going to be a strong man without his help. They could construct whatever the fuck they wanted to. Cloud was his mother's son.

He flipped the smaller white envelope over and over. He braced himself to tear it apart.

But instead ripped it open. A card, how cute.

"To my son" Hallmark said in softly calligraphic letters. He opened it and sighed disdainfully as a check floated to the floor.

Inside it had printed: "A past full of regrets waiting to be forgiven. A future full of new memories waiting to be made". Wow, they really make cards for fathers who abandon their sons. Charming.

In blue pen, a scratchy handwriting:

'To Mr. Cloud Strife  
'I came here to see you, and it's my own fault that I am too late and you have already moved on with your life. I cannot say I love you. But I have thought about you everyday of my life since the last time I saw you. You are my son. I left my address with your mother, if you want to say anything to me. Your brothers would like to know you. Please take this, it's the only useful thing I can offer you now.'

He ripped the card in half. Psycho enthusiastically puffed a little fireball at it, and Cloud blew it out like a birthday candle.

Money.

He stared at the check on the floor. So, what was the amount? How much does it cost to blow off a son? To miss every birthday, every holiday, every soccer game, his first steps and words, the first day of school, every Saturday morning? How about puberty? How about seeing him off to the military? How much did it cost to opt out of being a dad?

Cloud picked it up.

And gasped in disbelief.

One childhood, bought and paid for. Would you like that gift-wrapped?

He threw on his shoes and bolted.

The woman at the bank had given Cloud a horrified look when he asked for it all in hundreds.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Look, I'm going to cosign for you to get a bank account. There's no way I'm letting you carry this much money around."

"You're just a bank teller." He pointed out. She glared. He opened an account.

"The check has automatically cleared. You'll get your bank card in the mail in about five business days."

"But I need retail therapy now, sister."

"I'll give you two hundred, no more."

Cloud smiled sweetly up at her.

He then hopped the rail to downtown. He had a specific goal in mind.

Cherry's Tattoos and Scarification.

The door jingled as he walked in, the sound of blaring heavy metal escaping into the street. The walls were plastered with tattoo options, and photos of the shop's work. He was admiring it when a woman stood up from behind the counter out of nowhere.

She was in her thirties, short pink bobbed hair that was probably a wig. She had on a bright purple corset and black vinyl pants. Her tits were pushed up to infinity, and the moved like liquid with every movement she made. Her arms were completely covered in tattoos of scantily clad pin up women. On her collar-bones were two large pistols facing each other, swirly clouds all around them, and between her breasts, the Virgin Mary. Her eyebrows, bright pink lips, and chin were covered in piercings.

"Hey," She said.

Cloud walked right up to the counter as if he was ordering fast food, "I would like a tattoo, please."

She squinted, "How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"I.D.?" She countered.

"I must have left it at home … " He said hopefully.

"According to Midgar Tattoo code, column four, section eight, all customers who wish to be tattooed must be visibly sober and have proper identification," She lit a cigarette.

Cloud's eyes dimmed, "Oh."

"But I can pierce, brand, or scar you," She exhaled.

"Brand? Like chocobos?" he winced.

She smiled and poked his cheek with a sizzle sound effect.

"Scar?"

"It's a surgical blade. Cherry's specialty," She made a slicing motion.

He shook his head quickly, "Well, what kind of piercing do you do?"

"Anything you want."

"But what do I want?" He weighed the options.

"Well, the left ear is always popular."

"Everybody fucking already has that. I want something different … " He scratched his chin in thought.

Her green eyes lit up, "Hey, that's not a bad idea." She pulled his chin up. "You have a good face for a labret," She touched the metal ball beneath her bottom lip.

"Really?" He had never considered it.

"Yeah, you have a cherub face. That would look pretty sexy. And it's a good place, when you take it out you don't even see the hole. And it closes up in about a week if you don't want it anymore."

"Okay!"

She had him sign his life away on a do-not-sue-me contract and laid him down on a parlor chair.

"You're sure, Cloud?" She asked.

"Do it," He nodded.

"Alright. We have traditions here at Cherry's," She reached into a drawer, pulled out a pink blindfold, and wrapped it around his eyes.

"Um …" He stammered as he felt her straddle his lap. She pulled down his bottom lip and put something cold and metal inside of it, holding it open.

"Breathe in," She commanded.

He gave a shaky little breath.

"Like at the doctor, breathe in deep."

He swallowed, and tried again, even shakier than the first.

"Labrets are dangerous you know … " She said softly, pressing against him. "It really makes people want to … "

"Hut?" He asked, mouth held open.

"Fuck your face."

He gasped in. A quick, sharp pain, the thick sound of flesh being torn. He blew it out.

"Excellent!" She said, quickly hopping off of him and pulling off the blindfold. She removed the metal mouthpiece and wiped his chin off delicately.

"That's it!" He asked in disbelief.

"All done," She screwed something on his chin. "Doesn't hurt, does it?"

"Not at all … " He got up and checked himself out. She had screwed it a black metal spike, just below where his pinkness of his bottom lip ended. He had seen guys with them before, and it always looked kinda kinky and tough. But on him, it looked simply … Cute. His skin was little bit red, but fucking hardcorely.

"What do you think?"

"It's awesome!" He threw his arms around her neck.

"A little less permanent than a spur of the moment tattoo, right?"

He smiled sheepishly, "I still want one … "

"Check this out," Turning around, she pulled down the back of her pants exposing a butt cheek. It declared, in purple graffiti print, 'FUCK DA HATERZ'. "Think long and hard about it, little Cloud. Spur of the moment tattoos can be a huge mistake," She laughed.

What would he have gotten? He actually had no idea.

"Sixty gil," She announced, then starting throwing items in a black bag. "Leave it in when you go to bed tonight. Rinse your mouth out with this after you eat, clean it at night with this and a q-tip, put your spike in this when you're not using it. Don't let anyone pull on it for at least a week."

He handed over the money and nodded. Good timing. Hopefully in about a week someone would be pulling on it.

"One more thing," She stepped around the counter. "We have traditions here at Cherry's."

Taking his face, she pressed her mouth firmly against Cloud's bottom lip.

His first kiss came and went.

His face was bright red and his eyes were like moons when she pulled away with a pop. When he saw himself in the mirror he realized she wasn't exactly kissing him, she was leaving a big pink lip imprint around his new hardware.

"Don't wash the Kiss of Approval off for one full hour, or else it'll be doomed to infection," She warned sternly, applying more lipstick.

Cloud laughed softly, still quite embarrassed, "Really?"

She snorted, "Don't fuck with tradition. You should see how serious Prince Alberts take it."

He winced, not only at the notion of having his cock pierced, but that the same mouth that kissed anonymous dicks had just kissed his own. Yeesh!

"Thank you!" He said, flailing the bag a little.

"You're welcome sweetheart. I'll see you again soon, I'm sure."

The door jingled as he opened it to leave. She called, "Be careful with that thing! It unleashes some freaky shit in people sometimes!"

He looked back, "Girlfriend, I'm counting on it!"

A/N

1- The song Cloud is fagging out to in the beginning of the chapter is The Killer Song – Carolina Marquez. Under The Sea, I Need You Tonight, and the songs Sephiroth mention from Cloud's love CD are all real. Touch Society is made up. I wanted to keep Cloud and Sephiroth's favorites fictional.

2- Thank you thank you for the fabulous reviews! Leave more, I'm using their energy to power my robots.


	7. Mama Said Knock You Out

"Just look at the ease in which you can … Chop up celery! Dice tomatoes! Cube Chicken without even getting your hands dirty! Cut perfect cheese for that important party!"

I'm not convinced yet.

"Not convinced yet? Well take a look at this! If you order in the next five minutes, you will not only receive the Kitchen Summon 5000, but ALSO the Kitchen Summon 1000! Like juice? Well this handy little gadget allows you to freshly squeeze all of your own juice, in seconds!"

What if I don't like juice?

"And if you don't like juice, just watch these vegetables go from ordinary to extraordinary with the touch of a button!"

Sephiroth had seen this infomercial more times than he could count. This particular night, he had been watching it in a vague, post-flu sort of consciousness for approximately twenty minutes. And it was all for what was about to happen riiight … Now!

"Watch as this poor woman suffers through the old way of chopping vegetables!" The woman took a butcher knife, and literally stabbed her own hand with it. She then clutched it to her chest in mild discomfort, "Ouch! That must have hurt!"

If Zack had been around, they both would have been in stitches.

But all alone, he only smirked, flipped off the television, and rolled over.

He listened to the hum of the ceiling fan, the waxing and waning rumble of cars every now and then, and the airy sounds of his own respiration. He was tired, and in bed, and therefore should have been asleep by all laws of nature. But sleep seemed like an impossibility with the pounding in his chest, the flexing in his toes, and the electrical activity zapping around in his brain with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

'Must be wound up from work,' He lied to no one in particular.

He breathed against his pillow, and closed his eyes.

Feeling uncomfortable, he unceremoniously rolled over to try the other side.

Switching polarities, he grabbed his pillow and followed behind it to the other end of the bed, laying out flat on his stomach.

General Sephiroth was a faggot. That much, he knew to be true.

But not before dating several women in his time. The last of which was a blonde haired, blue eyed train wreck named Kristen. At first she was simply a sweet girl, obviously beautiful, and it was such a relief not to have to hunt down a random date for those 'Please Bring One Guest' events. To Zack, she was a hot babe! But To a twenty-one-year-old male, that was more than enough for an extended commitment. But as time passed by, the more he revealed about his true self to her, the more she felt the need to force him into the role of the emotionless, stoic hardass.

He had to be that guy. It was fun to be that guy. He was really good at being that guy. But he never felt that he was that guy, at least not out of uniform, not with his friends, and never with her. But she insisted that Sephiroth be some sort of puzzle for her to solve. It started with small things.

He didn't like to wear underwear.

Her reason: He was sexually molested as a child.

Real reason: He liked the feel of leather against his bare ass.

He preferred not to eat red meat.

Her reason: It reminded him of dead, bloody comrades on a battlefield.

Real reason: It gave him raunchy gas, and he thought cows were fairly cute.

He liked to write freehand instead of typing.

Her reason: He expressed himself best with his own two hands, because it was the only way he could really connect with people.

Real reason: He knew his handwriting was atrocious, and was scolded all his life for it. He got sadistic pleasure from forcing people to figure out what he was trying to say.

He always wanted to be on the left side of her.

Her reason: He was a control freak, and was herding her just like troops in the war.

Real reason: He was left-handed. If there was danger, he could protect her much more easily with her on his right side.

Eventually, Kristiroth, as people like to say, had slowly transformed from a comfortable dating scenario/armchair psychology project, into an epic romance movie. She called him every single day 'just to hear his voice'. She was always waiting for gusting winds to compliment his hair and her skirt. Every time their eyes met, she would hold his and lift her eyebrows desperately. The most casual of kisses left her breathless and her bosom heaving. All they needed was a boom mic, and maybe a fucking script so he could figure out what the hell she wanted.

He soon found out. Her fingers traced over the belts on his chest as they lied together in her bed one not-so-special evening. She undid them, and kissed along the slightly indented skin of his shoulders where the leather had been hugging.

"Wanna do pizza?" He had asked softly, making a lazy motion to get up.

"Sephiroth!" She had moaned desperately, " … You're always denying yourself everything."

He had wrinkled his forehead, "Huh?"

"Why don't you ever just … "

Then she took his hand by the fingers and slipped them up her skirt. His twenty-one year old brain grinded to a dull halt. And all too quickly, clothes were coming off.

What should have been one of the most important moments of his young adulthood culminated with the most confounding and humiliating. In her bed, completely exposed for the first time ever, with both of his hands full of woman, he looked down at her expectant, makeup streaked face …

And couldn't have been less aroused if she had been a corpse.

As he rolled off of her and quickly pulled on his pants and refastened his belts, Sephiroth knew the deepest shame a man could ever know. He had always thought that he would have exceptional prowess in bed, at least after a few rounds of practice. Lord knew that in his torrid mind, he was no virgin! But actually there, actually between her legs … Nothing in him burned. Absolutely Nothing.

He relayed this tragic information in private to his favorite nurse, hoping that some unfortunate mix of prescriptions could be blamed for the malfunction in his libido.

Rhonda put down her clipboard and rolled her chair over to face Sephiroth directly, "Well, General … We've known each other for quite some time."

"Quite some time," He agreed, fearing the worst.

"I mean, when we met you had zits and I was a red head. We go way back. I know you. Think about that."

"Thinking about it," He echoed, and looked at the ceiling, just knowing he was about to be told that he would never be able to have sex, and that a surgery was already on the schedule to chop of his cock and float it in a jar.

She drew in a long breath, "You didn't 'malfunction' … You're a homosexual."

Sephiroth walked out of medical lab. The place was crawling with Shin-Ra employees, most of whom were male, most of whom seemed to have contractual obligations to be insanely attractive. He was astounded by his own ignorance.

A million little things in his life suddenly made sense. Why did he prefer to examine the plain tighty-whitey and tube socked male models decorating the background of lingerie catalogues? Why did he sometimes catch his eyes wandering over his friends? Why did he love to shop for clothes?

And why, oh why, did a twenty one year old virgin not have the desire to have sex with his girlfriend in four entire months of dating?

When General Sephiroth masturbated, the involuntary images in his head were never of curves. He saw narrow hips and shoulder blades. And felt kisses that didn't involve worrying about lipstick stains, but rather flowed out of the person beneath him with a wild abandon that Kristen never possessed, even on the literal brink of making love. He was dreaming of rough, short, tenor sounds of pleasure. Of a smooth, hard chest. Of something salty and male.

He thought he had been thinking of himself. But it was what he needed.

Of course, he immediately bid farewell to the girl the world had expected him to settle down with. And apparently she had expected it too, letting tiny fists fly in attempts to destroy him. He would never dream of hitting or even defending against a lady, and took the feeble little beating until she wore herself out. Her acrylic nails didn't hurt, but her angry words did … Sort of. But he listened to them. He felt that he owed it to her to listen to them.

According to Kristen, Sephiroth was a teasing, prude, frigid, uncaring, self centered, stupid, boring, not-as-hot-as-everyone-says … Faggot.

Faggot. Faggot?

He never much thought about that word. It wasn't in his vocabulary, but he had heard it plenty, knew what it meant. But actually being referred to as one was like hearing it for the first time. She leaned in the doorway as he left, and cried the fat, mascara streaking tears of Scarlett O' Hara. And he gave her the one thing she always seemed to want from him: A hardass exit line.

My dear, Sephiroth frankly didn't give a damn.

He went directly to Nurse Rhonda's flat that she shared with her girlfriend, Julie. They opened the door to find him there, unannounced and not wearing any shoes.

"It's over with Kris … "

Both had made identical faces of concern.

" … And I'm probably a faggot."

The two faces contorted with identical jolts of shock.

Then he laughed. He laughed long and hard, until his stomach ached and he was on his ass on their kitchen floor. He laughed harder when the two women joined in with him, unsure of what was so funny, but unable to keep the unhinged, completely hysterical sound from infecting them. After several minutes he winded down into long, melodic chuckles, and he wiped the tears from his face.

His soul had had an orgasm.

Rhonda lent him a book, 'I'm Gay and That's Okay' by Violent Rodriguez, a plain, lawyerly, forty something year old man by day, fabulous drag queen by night. Sephiroth accepted the book that he 'simply had to read' like it might turn into a snake at any moment.

"If I die and they find this at my place, I'm going to haunt you forever," He had warned them.

After skimming the book, he decided that it was the biggest waste of time of his adult life. Those were two precious hours of doing nothing that he'd never get back. But one particular phrase had rung out in his head when he read it.

"You like what you like, honey."

Easy enough. But what did he like? Nothing stuck out in his mind about any of his prior girlfriends that he particularly missed. So, without really meaning to, he started to notice tiny things about the males in his life.

Zack's hair smelled like cinnamon. Like. Brian had a deep, deep line down the center of his back. Like. Wilson's arms were long, and gently muscled. Like. Ender always had white crusty deodorant in his armpit hair. Don't like. When Max sweat, it made his cheeks and chin rosy. Like.

But he could never be truly interested in one of his SOLDIER buddies. He could recognize their individual droppings by sight alone. The quarters had been far too close during the war.

So, with a wish list of qualifications, and feeling rather sheepish after the supreme disappointment of his first attempt at sex, he decided that he was never, ever going to settle again. Especially not for just 'pretty'. He was going to wait until someone came along who was perfect. As time passed, there was nobody who wandered into his line of sight that encompassed any of his 'likes', without a slew of major 'don't likes'. Handsome smiles and gorgeous eyes always belonged to complete bores. And great personalities always belonged to … Well …

"Looks aren't everything! Put a bag over his head!" Zack suggested. A best friend has a way of finding out fucking everything, and General Sephiroth's sexual orientation was definitely a big topic of conversation the week he figured it out. Every five minutes the phone would ring, and an excited Zack would be on the other end.

"So, are you the bitch or the butch?" Click.

"Do you think I'm cute? Be honest! I'm pretty cute, right?" Click.

"So, if you didn't go all the way with Kristen, and you never banged a dude either … Are you like, extra virginy?" CLICK!

Sephiroth sighed presently, his face pressed into his pillow.

And, presently, he was not wound up from work. He was … Distracted.

When the little foreign kid asked Sephiroth what kind of music he liked, he decided to give a little extra attention to the poor thing, since he was obviously … Off. After their brief but amusing conversation on the phone, it was evident that little foreign kid wasn't mentally challenged, but … Something.

The fantastic CD made it obvious what that little something was. The little foreign kid had some sort of crush, and the audacity to let it be known. Sephiroth was somewhat curious, and a little investigation proved that Cloud Strife was neither little, foreign, or a kid. He was a developing, exotic young man. And he had a personality on him. And he walked and stood so …

Sephiroth hadn't found many things difficult about mentally accepting his own homosexuality… But he found it very troubling and a little embarrassing to check out another man's ass. But this young man drew attention to his in ways that left Sephiroth's jaw aching from clenched teeth.

Cloud Strife was absolutely gorgeous.

And General Sephiroth felt absolutely filthy.

It wasn't exactly about age. It wasn't even about rank. He just felt like a big, creepy pervert. And those were his exact thoughts, sitting alone with a full-blown erection in the dark.

'Oh no! I'm a big, creepy pervert!'

After the transfixing video feed was over, he turned off the computer and ran for a few hours to think.

'How do guys do it?' He had wondered.

Well, he knew how they did it. But not how they … Dated. When he had wanted to ask a woman out, he had simply talked to her. Turned on the charm. Took her somewhere chicks like to go. Brought flowers.

Where would Cloud Strife want to go? Hm … He hadn't yet met a man who would turn down food, so he decided to take Cloud Strife out for whatever meal was convenient for whatever time he was next in Midgar. And what would make good flowers for Cloud Strife? … A CD, of course! He would buy him a CD! Too easy!

And those were his plans. Then one morning a little tiny blue pill, unnoticed in his daily cocktail, went past his lips and down into his body. Then the next day, and the next day. And so on. Until one night he was freezing, then boiling, then vomiting, then shitting, then was unable to sleep for more than an hour at a time although he was beyond exhausted. The next morning, he was shocked by what he found in the mirror. He was white, bone dry everywhere, and looking like he had just risen up from the grave. A plague was upon him.

Every once in a while, the doctors that raised Sephiroth from an infancy liked to shake things up and test his immune system. By trying to kill him. So far, Sephiroth's body had survived every major disease in human history. This time, the culprit was innocent enough.

Vitamin A. Just one of those little blue pills was enough to poison a well.

Sephiroth had laid on the white paper lining of the patient's bed, while the doctors were busy cooing at him and congratulating him over his remarkable ability to not die.

"I didn't prepare a speech," The General whispered raspily. The vitamin A toxicity had opened the door to an epic flu, "But I'd like to thank whoever it was that decided to try poisoning me over shucking out another epidemic. The Bubonic Plague was sort of fun last time … " His voice trailed off until his lips were moving but no sound was coming out.

"You wasted your voice being a smartass," Dr. Hojo scolded gently, handing Sephiroth a throat coating lollipop.

Sephiroth unhappily tore off the wrapper and stuck the thing in his mouth, and made a writing motion. After a notebook and a pen were given to him, he continued his rant on paper.

Dealing with being almost poisoned to death, and taking care of his usual workload, which did not give him any time to recover, consumed all of his thoughts and energy.

Life went on as usual.

Until Cloud Strife entered the dark conference room like an angel on a sunbeam. For the first, real time seeing him in person, Sephiroth had been completely floored by those big, blue eyes, that edgy blonde hair, the delicate nape of his neck, those long, slender limbs, his interesting sense of style, his soft looking skin, his flirtatious attitude.

And hearing that smooth voice with that tiny purr beneath it, Sephiroth, who unfortunately hadn't slept in two days and was still ass deep in vitamin A, antibiotics and flu residue, was stricken almost bloodless. A strange emotion that was a mixture of flu delirium and frustration at not meeting with Cloud on his own terms came over Sephiroth, and he did everything short of making a direct order to get him to leave the premises. But Cloud was a persistent little bastard. Like.

Inviting him to Zack's annual shit face fest, purely impulsive, as he had zero intentions of actually attending that year due to his current condition. But he didn't want to leave the copy room without making sure that they would meet again soon. Giving Cloud the banged up CD wasn't a part of the original plan either, but he hadn't had the chance to buy him one, and actually wondered if maybe an old one of his own would be even better 'flowers' for Cloud.

"I'm going to the Halloween thing after all." Sephiroth told Zack over the phone.

"What made you change your mind?" Zack crunched something in his ear.

"I just did. And Cloud Strife is coming, too."

" … That's what I like to hear!" Zack had said. Whether or not that was suggestive was left unclear, as Sephiroth knew better than to question it. But then again, his best friend always knew every fucking thing anyways.

In letting his mind travel the course of the past few, strange months of his life, Sephiroth's lower stomach went on the journey also. First, it was twisted in knots over his anxiety. Then, it dipped a little thinking about humiliating moments, it heated in anger at times, it rolled over and over thinking about his little crush.

And now it had an erection pressed in between it and the mattress.

Sephiroth allowed his mind to yet again replay the sequence that had haunted him for the last six days.  
A piece of paper floated to the floor with a gentle swooping noise, just loud enough to draw up his green eyes. Cloud had cursed under his breath, and squatted down to pick up the stray sheet. And as he crouched, his tight little excuse for a pair of pants slipped lower … And lower … Until the gentle curve of softer flesh popped up from the waistband like a muffin.

What he would have given to have grabbed a hold of those hips and dipped his tongue down into that exposed crack. What would that blonde school boy have done? Gasped? Cried out and fumbled to pull his pants up? Ran out of the room in embarrassment?

"No Sir," Cloud quietly corrected. "I would have done this..."

Copy Room Cloud arched his back and invited Sephiroth to work his tongue between the starchy roughness of his jeans and the baby softness of his skin. He grinned when he noticed those gorgeous blue eyes peeking over his shoulder to watch. He gave those eyes a show, slowly dragging his tongue across the partially exposed curves and finally down in between them.

Sephiroth drove his tongue as deep into Cloud as it would go, wrenching out a series of sharp gasps, then ran it up the smooth expanse of exposed lower back and up the dry, cottony plain of his yellow t-shirt. He covered Cloud's back as his tongue finally arrived at soft lips, and pushed past them into a warm mouth. The wet little tongue inside was gently flicking against his when he heard the quick rip of a zipper. Cloud's fingers snaked down his back and into the waistband of those silly, silly black jeans, tugging them down until they bunched around his spread knees. Cloud gripped the side of the copier that creaked in plastic protest under his weight, and presented that ass, cute and round and turned up and begging … To get …

Six intense seconds later, the General was finally asleep.

" … Seph … "

Cam and Psycho looked at other. This was the best quirk that came from living with Cloud Strife, by far. Better than properly folded shirts, and way better than shower singing.

Sleep talking.

If this situation was handled delicately enough, his subconscious would ramble on for minutes on end. The subject matter ranged from a possible betrayal in the ranks of G.I. Joe, to how to best cook a chocolate omelet, to how disgusting the vanity of peacocks could be, to of course how desperately he wanted to get into General Sephiroth's pants.

Cam put a finger to his lips at Psycho, then leaned down close to the small ear poking out through his edged blonde tresses. Making his voice silky as he could, he called, " … Cloud?"

He shifted, then went completely still, " … Yar?"

Psycho snickered, and Cam waved him to silence, " … What are you doing?"

"Ohhh joost thiiinkin' about pe'haps gettin' a bit o' somethin' … " Cloud's sleeping voice lilted at absurd volumes and tones, and was so heavily accented it barely registered as English. He rubbed his face against the pillow violently, then again went still.

"What do you want?"

Cloud rolled over with a fling of his arm, and began to snore loudly.

Psycho tilted his head, and Cam called again, "Clooud?"

His brow furrowed. He babbled enthusiastically for several moments, then turned his head quickly to the side. He began to breathe anticlimactically.

Psycho and Cam shrugged, figuring the show was over, when his small, unassuming voice sighed, " … Please, Mr. General?"

It was all over. Cam and his cat laughed long and hard until water blue eyes fluttered open in confusion.  
"Happy Halloween!"

"Noooooo!" Cloud wailed, and rolled over into his covers in an attempt to slide back into the dream world.

"Today is the fuckin' day, my friend!"

Cloud sighed deeply. Today was the fucking day. But … But … He snuggled the pillow that was Sephiroth just moments ago.

"Aww get up, it's already one o' fuckin' clock! We gotsta go get costumes!" Cam grabbed one end of the comforter and tried to yank apart the little blond burrito. After much tug of warring, he tossed the end to the other side of Cloud instead of pulling, thus rendering him completely exposed.

Blue eyes opened to glare as he was scooped up and tossed into the bathroom.

"Exfoliate somethin'!" Cam commanded before slamming the door closed.

Cloud stood in the silence for a little bit, letting consciousness seep into his sleepy head. Just a dream. But what a dream it was! Hubba hubba!

He caught a glimpse of his shirtless self in the mirror. Turning to the side, he took an assessing look.  
He and Cam had spent every single night that week in the gym. They both had serious love interests now, so that meant they needed to be packing some serious heat. Why Cam was putting in the extra effort baffled Cloud, because he was turning into quite the little wet dream with just the regular schedule. But he himself … Well, could kind of see abs if he squeezed his ass to the left, flexed his stomach to the right, tilted his head forward, and didn't breathe. But it wasn't exactly the hottest look. Just standing naturally, the only definition he had was a shallow line down the middle. That's some mighty weak sauce. The weight he had been trying to gain seemed to all go to his chest, which had transformed from a skinny, concave disaster to almost … Muscular. But just almost.

He threw back his head and shrieked, "I wanna be riiipped!"

"Shut da fuck up!" Was the universe's only reply.

Cloud sighed and let his sweatpants drop to the floor.

"Oh. Hello."

"Good afternoon, Cloud!" His morning wood exclaimed.

"Sorry for having to wake up from that dream. You know how it is," Cloud stepped into the shower and tested the water with his toes.

"Don't worry, I underst-hand. Get it? GET IT? Hahahaaaa. Soooo. Is it your intention to help me out here or … "

"I already told you," Cloud sighed while working shampoo into his hair. "From here on out we're saving up all our reserves for Sephiroth."

"Riiight. I know we agreed to that but I still can't help but feel a tad … Apprehensive."

"That's not the attitude I want from you right now! You need be a team player," Cloud said while scrubbing every inch of his body, including his outie belly button and in between his fingers and toes.

"I'm all for the cause. But I've been doing some research and there are some facts about the male anatomy that I think you'll find as troubling as I do."

"How exactly did you do research?" Cloud asked while swiping at his underarm stubble with a disposable razor.

"If the male anatomy is denied proper and regular ejaculation, it becomes testy and irritable. The sensory glands are so over stressed that when stimulation is finally granted, they're too bitchy to take the time to draw out the experience, and thus, the male is rendered a 'minute man'."

"You're making this up."

"Not really."

"Go to sleep, now," Cloud commanded, jerking the dial to the colder side of the spectrum, and rinsing the conditioner out of his hair.

He was just about finished when there came a banging on the door. Cloud quickly finished and wrapped a towel around his waist, "Naked!" He warned.

"Phone call!" Cam announced anyways.

He cracked the door open and poked his dripping head out, "Is it … "

"All I know is someone knocked an' said phone's for you … Run bitch, run!"

Cloud let out a wild sound and threw a second towel on top of his head before dashing out into the hallway and downstairs to the house phone.

He had gotten a call earlier in the week by Zack. He managed to hide his thorough disappointment that it wasn't his beloved, but spent a couple hours chatting happily with his long lost pal instead. Zack was being pretty vague about what they were going to be doing this evening, but had given him directions to his apartment, and had advised Cloud consume as many carbs as possible and take a few aspirins. He knew what that was; hangover protection. In some parts of the world, it was called a Nibelheim Condom.

But he had been waiting oh-so-patiently to hear something from his General, and after that hot ass dream, he knew it just had to be him. Fate works like that. In the hallway by the phone, a small group of cowboys were … – Cowboys?

'Oh yeah, it's Halloween,' Cloud remembered.

He picked up the receiver and prepared to sound sexy yet casual, not bored but not trying too hard, not desperate yet completely interested, naked and lying in wait not naked and shivering in the hallway with a bunch of cowboys, " … Hello."

"What the fuck is wrong with Midgar? How does a little boy just waltz into a fucking tattoo parlor and get a fucking hole shoved through his face?"

"Hi mom … " Cloud snickered shock into his hand. He hadn't been able to decide on what words to say to his mother regarding the new addition to his face, and opted to simply email her a picture. Perhaps that wasn't the most sensitive route. "It's not a big hole."

"Oh, good! It's just a little one."

"Mh! Mom!" Cloud repeated, shooing away a group of guys who had congregated to hear Mrs. Strife scream over the span of continents. "It's just a little spike under my bottom lip! It's nothing bad, I promise!"

"Clow? Are you sure it isn't a … Sex thing?"

That just about did it. Cloud's shocked laughter echoed throughout the Rufus building.

"Little bastard!" She gritted out, before returning the infectious laughter against all of her will.

"Oh don't you even pretend to be so straight edge, mom. I know about you. Grandma said when you were my age you – "

" – Fine," She interrupted indignantly. "Congratulations. You have a hole in your face."

Batman tapped Cloud's shoulder and held up five fingers. Cloud nodded, "Mom, I only have five minutes, so say something nice to me."

"I miss you like hell," He heard her light a cigarette.

"I miss you too. So … Hey. My dad … "

"Yeah."

"Can I ask some questions?"

"Sure."

"And you'll answer them? You won't be stricken blind by a headache, or pretend you don't remember, or be PMSing too hard to think about it?"

" … Sure."

"Okay," He said slowly. "How did you meet him?"

"At a concert."

"Who was playing?"

"He was. He drummed for some shitty little band that opened up for Noble Man."

"Are you even serious?" Noble Man was a very well known metal band from back in the day. Their codpieces left nothing to be desired.

"I wish I wasn't! Me and my friends hitchhiked to Junon to see those assholes play. And, there your dad was."

"Were you a groupie?" Cloud asked dreamily.

She laughed, "… Maybe just a little."

"Were you in love?"

"Yes."

His face burned. His mother never answered these questions. Never. "Was I an accident?"

"You were a … Surprise."

The truth didn't hurt. Cloud smiled, "Is that why he left?"

"Hell, no! He was ecstatic. And … He was a good dad to you while he was around. But things just didn't work between us."

"What happened?"

"There was someone else."

Cloud threw up his hands, "Your best friend? One of your sisters? His own sister? A guy? A goat? Who?"

"Christ, it's not a soap opera! He wanted someone else, someone that wasn't me."

"Why didn't you choke a bitch?"

She exhaled thoughtfully, "Your dad was, and still is … " She laughed, "Cloud, he's so fucking boring. And he was always so depressed. And a hypochondriac! Ugh! And if you ever disagreed with him, he would just skulk off for days on end. Cloud, when he told me that he wanted to leave, I let him go."

Cloud laughed with her, "Well if it isn't some perverted, sordid ordeal, why didn't you ever just tell me?"

"Hm. Well, it's easy to laugh about it now, you're grown up. I honestly didn't expect him to … Never try to see you. I felt … " She exhaled. " … Guilty, I guess. What did he have to say to you?"

"Oh, that…" Cloud fidgeted with the towel around his waist, "Well, it was a boring note in a generic card. And a check for … " He glanced at Batman who was shamelessly staring him down, covered up the mouthpiece and whispered into it.

There were several moments of silence, "What the hell did you do with it?"

"I did the responsible thing and opened up a bank account!" Hey, it was the truth.

"Don't blow it, kid."

He closed his eyes and nodded, "Oh I won't. I have a plan."

"This I have to hear."

"Well, I'm in quite a stressful situation! So I believe that it will not only help me mentally, but downright spiritually to every so often indulge in a spot of retail therapy."

A sigh from Mrs. Strife.

"The only thing I'm going to spend any real money on is the courting of my life partner. Then, after I'm a SOLDIER, and of course a military wife, I won't need money anymore. I'll save the rest for my kids."

There was a long pause, " … Kids?"

"Me and my life partner are going to adopt."

"And your life partner is?"

Batman was still staring, so Cloud opted for: "He who must not be named."

" … I see. How goes your courting so far?"

"We have a date tonight!"

She gasped in delight, "No shit!"

"Yeah! I kinda ran into him last week, and I saw hiiim and he saw meee … The next thing I knew he was asking me to help him with his work, very important um … Official Shin-Ra documentations. Then he told me that he had been thinking of me for weeks, and he couldn't bear the distance between us anymore, and that he needed to see me again personally."

"That's a very interesting interpretation."

Cloud kicked his feet a little. His mom always said that when she knew he was fudging details.

"Alright, alright. I stole his coffee from the office bitch boy, gave it to him, and bugged the hell out of him while he tried to work. But, momma!" He clutched feverishly at the towel covering his head, "He is SO beautiful! And he's so cool! And he gave me his favorite CD! And he did ask me out! Well, maybe not out out, it's to a Halloween get together thing. And we're not really going together together … But we'll be together!"

Mrs. Strife chuckled softly.

"So!" He said brightly, changing the subject, "Since your little love child has left the nest, have you gotten back into the dating scene? Mmm?"

"Christ … "

"Oh, come on! The kids at school used to say that you're a MILF!"

She choked, "CLOUD STRIFE!"

Cloud laughed freely. Being on another continent was awesome. Batman cleared his throat and hovered his finger judicially over the hang-up button.

"Mom, I have to go before this asshole has a cow."

"Alright, baby. I love you. And hey … Get him."

"Oh, I will … I get it from you, MILF!"

"I'm fucking hanging up!" And she did.

Cloud handed the phone over to Batman, who seized it and dialed. After a few moments he said, "Delivery."

Halloween in Midgar was apparently a very big deal.

Back in Nibelheim the extent of the holiday was that the little kids did their thing. But then, there were only like ten little kids at any given time. And usually there was a like a party at school on the last hour of the day or the friday before, and everyone talked and ate candy. Well, Cloud only supposed that they talked and ate candy, because he was always hiding alone in the bathroom stall.

The train station's walls were plastered with colorful advertisements of local house parties. Grown men and women walked around in full costume. All the ladies were some trampy version of something, all in short skirts, thigh highs and wigs. The guys were all gory monsters or kinky occupations like cops or firefighters. When Sephiroth so naughtily suggested that he wear a costume, he thought maybe being a little extra punky would cover it. Not so, Cam had informed him.

"Do you already know what you're going to be?" Cloud asked when they strolled out of the station and into the afternoon air of the downtown slums.

"Maybe. Michele's already got hers, she's gonna be a fuckin' nurse," He wiggled his eyebrows. "So I figured I oughta be a doctor."

"That's so cute! You're going to match!"

"You's supposed to match who you's with!"

Cloud chewed on the back of his spike in thought. He hadn't the foggiest idea of what Sephiroth would show up as. The thought of that man in costume was almost too much to bear. What he would give to match him! But … They weren't together.

"Is this where you live? Lived?" Cloud asked. This wasn't the main strip of downtown, but a slightly more residential area.

"Close. Our neighborhood is a few blocks dataway." They stopped at a crosswalk. Cam punched the button in a strange Morse code-like pattern, and the light immediately turned in their favor.

Cam led the way down the sidewalk to a vacant-looking storefront with a single flickering neon sign, Vacancy. They entered.

What Cloud saw were aisles and aisles cluttered with costumes and props. But to get to them, they had to cross a graveyard infested with the undead, a grisly crime scene, a minefield of moving mechanical demons hanging from the ceiling, and a horde of monsters clustered at every aisle entrance.

Cloud's stomach dropped straight to his balls.

But Cam trotted off without hesitation through the graveyard, side stepped the gore, swatted away the demons, and nimbly slid between the group of vampires at the far aisle.

Cloud zipped his red track jacket up to his chin. 'It's just a store.' He told himself before taking the path that Cam had blazed.

He hopped over a rubber hand sticking up from the ground in the graveyard, edged around a knee high pile of oozing intestines, bent over and scuttled well beneath the demons' reach, and closing his eyes and holding his breath, slid between the vampires.

And yelped like a little puppy when one grabbed him.

The vampire laughed heartily.

"Hey! Look at this!" Cam called.

Cloud socked the vampire in the arm, who 'ow'ed but laughed even harder, and went to see what Cam was looking at. He was holding up blue striped pajamas, bandages, and a defibrillator.

"Maybe I should be a fuckin' patient, eh? Eh? EH?"

"Yeeah, that's good and kinky," Cloud wheezed.

Cam seemed satisfied, "Now lets' find one for you. Any ideas?"

"Not exactly. I just want to shoot for cute."

"Pirate!" Cam immediately suggested. Cloud scrunched his nose.

"A baseball player! A priest! Austin Powers! A zombie! A ninja! Bam Bam! Heeey, General Seph kinda looks like Bam Bam!"

Cloud gasped sharply, "No he doesn't!"

They scooched past a gaggle of serial killers and into the next aisle.

"A detective! Frankenstein! A sailor! A knight! Spider Man! OHH! Speed Racer!"

"Speed Racer?" Cloud smiled, and picked it up. It came with a very realistic looking helmet. "I think I'm gonna pass. No hats."

"Why da fuck not?"

"My hair is … Ya know. Glorious."

"But dis costume. It is outstanding…" Cam lingered over it for several moments before popping open the package and placing the helmet reverently on his head. He ditched the kinky patient costume.

They squeezed through a herd of witches and walked into the next aisle. All the costumes seemed to be for girls. Slutty girls.

"Um..." Cam said underneath his visor.

"I'm not that gay!" Cloud soundly declared, and they shimmied past a bunch of mad scientists to the next aisle.

"A ghost! Phantom of the Opera! A gangster! A demon! A slice of pizza!"

" … Shit," Cloud drawled.

"Didja find something?"

He held it up to show Cam.

"Well, I'd say dat is definitely you, Cloud."

It was perfect. Cute in an obvious way. Funny in a nerdy way because of who he was hanging out with tonight. And if he needed it to be for a certain someone … It could also be sexy. He had long since admitted to himself that he had a uniform fetish. One of the many loose screws that he didn't feel like tightening up.

"To the fitting rooms!"

When the boys emerged from their respective stalls, they had a good, long, abdominal scorching guffaw at one another.

One was a muscular version of Speed Racer.

The other, a far too thoroughly convincing Condor Scout. Brown pleated shorts, bruised knees, brown button up utility shirt, white knee high socks, a sash full of merit badges, and a red scarf tied around his neck. The only parts that gave him away were his dirty shin high combat boots, and a facial piercing. He decided to wear it out of the store.

The costume was dirt cheap, as was the case with most of the things he wanted in life. Bright shoes, old punk records, magazines, tiny pants. He didn't have very expensive taste. While Cam paid for his costume, Cloud sadly counted what he had left until the following month's mail day when he would get his bankcard. One hundred and twenty gil, not much! He closed his wallet huffily, determined to make good on his plans and to not spend any money that wasn't necessary.

When they exited the costume store, they shared an awkward pause. Cameron was going to a party at a friend's house, with his oldest little sister and his new girlfriend. Cloud was going to head back to campus, then to Zack's. Their paths were not aligned this day.

"You gonna visit home, now?" Cloud asked.

"Yeeah."

They both ground their feet into the sidewalk uneasily.

Cloud sighed, "Well, I guess I'm gonna go … "

The boys realized why this parting felt so strained. It was going to be their first day apart since school started.

Cam burst, "You sure ya don't want me to come with? Fuck Joe's party. He's a fuckin' twat."

Cloud shrieked protest, "Don't worry about me! Go see your friends … And your girlfriend! You gotta!"

"You sure?"

Cloud swung a fist into the side of the helmet, sending Cam stumbling and laughing into the direction he was headed anyways. They waved goodbye and went their separate ways.

Alone, he strolled along the sidewalk in his Halloween costume, swinging the bag with his normal clothes around, heading vaguely towards the train station and with the entire afternoon to kill. His stomach growled. So he bought a pretzel. One hundred and fifteen gil left. Then he became extremely thirsty. He bought a gallon of orange juice. One hundren and ten gil left. He sat down on the curb, started to think about Sephiroth, got nervous, and downed the entire thing. Ten minutes later, he ducked into a convenience store, bought a music magazine while dancing around in front of the register, and bolted into the restroom for about an hour while he read the whole thing on the pot and recovered. One hundred gil left.

After that, Cloud found a playground. He swung for about half an hour, trying to go all the way around the bar. Unsuccessful. Then he got conned into pushing two blushing, giggling pre-teen girls for another half an hour. He walked around the surrounding park until he found a wishing well. After asking several people for change for a gil, he found an ice cream man. He bought a grape push up pop with Bam Bam on the package, and made four wishes with his change.

'Sephiroth, please love me.'

'SOLDIER, please accept me.'

'Anal Orgasm, please have a reunion tour.'

He thought hard to get the most out of the fourth and final wish.

'Please let me be 6 feet tall!'

Ninety-Seven gil left.

Then there was the quick, carby bite to eat at a mom and pop restaurant. Ninety gil left. An hour at an arcade. Seventy gil left. A very talented violinist on the corner. Sixty gil left, and a thrift store t-shirt that had a picture of a vinyl record, and a caption that read 'Ask me about my 12 inch'. Fifty gil left.

Cloud Strife did not have expensive taste. But he was a financial tornado.

He grimaced at his wallet, and firmly decided not to do anything else but get on the train back to the plate. As he passed by a small record store, he didn't dare look in the window. He didn't dare. He really wasn't going to look in the window. He wasn't going to look. He didn't dare.

He quickly ran in and began rooting around in the barrel full of buttons next to the cash register. Mostly stupid bands, but then he found his final purchase for the evening.

A Touch Society button. He triumphantly pinned it on his Condor Scout sash.

Forty-nine gil left.

Zack had suggested that he drop by around eight. Cloud didn't want to appear too eager, so he loitered around the outside of the upper plate apartment complex until five minutes past eight. He then lunged for the glass double doors and leapt up the checker patterned staircase with both of his feet and hands.

He skidded to a stop in front of Zack's door. Before he decided to announce his presence, he expelled all the air from his body, looked at the ceiling, clasped his hands, and gave a wordless prayer of utter, soul deep desire.

Then he unclasped his hands, made two tight fists, and knocked a short little rhythm on the door.

It opened as wide as the chain latch would allow, and one familiar blue eye peeped out.

Cloud grinned, "Would you like to buy some cookies?"

The door slammed shut, then swung open again, and Zack scooped him up into a hug.

"How you doing?" He shouted with joy.

"Fine!" Was the shaky reply. All Zack had on was a pair of boxers, and the contents were smooshed against Cloud's stomach.

"Don't just say 'fine', that's lame. How are you?" He babbled, pulling Cloud inside.

"I'm in the worst pain of my life!" Cloud made a large motion to his body in general. "And I have to do two papers by next week … And I have a math test but I think I go retarded whenever I try to study … Aaand I can run for forty-five minutes before I begin to see black dots!"

"God, your life sucks!" Zack sighed happily. "Want anything?"

"Whatever," Cloud shrugged, and Zack bounced into the kitchen.

Cloud scanned the residence, not exactly surprised to find the eclectic décor of a bachelor pad, but was slightly surprised that the pad itself was quite the hip little loft situation. It was a low key, homey place, and obviously lived in. Here and there were little touches that made Cloud smile, the foremost being a theater sized movie poster for The Omen taking up a huge amount of space on the brick wall behind the red sofa. Only a single man would be able to get away with that. But the place smelled clean, like fresh laundry and faintly of something sweet and hot, like yummy cookies. Cloud ran his finger down a DVD tower in the corner that was as tall as he was, to find only scary movies, with a raunchy comedy here or there.

Eesh! Some of the titles made Cloud's lower lip pop out. I Spit on Your Grave, Flesh Eating Wantons from Sector Four, Dead Alive, Materia Diphtheria … Gorgasm?

"You never said you liked horror so much!" Cloud commented as Zack clanged around in the kitchen.

"Nah, I can't stand that crap. Boring," He answered, trotting into the living room with a soda in one hand and a Yoo-hoo in the other.

"Why do you have so many?" He asked, taking the Yoo-hoo.

"Huh? Those are Seph's," Zack said as if Cloud were ignorant, and cracked open his soda, slurping up the initial fizzy explosion.

Cloud blinked rapidly.

"This isn't my place. We're just meeting here."

Cloud looked around in utter disbelief, at The Omen poster, and the cold Yoo-hoo in his hands, and back to Zack in his underwear. Then at a pile of bills sitting on the television, at the black and yellow striped blanket bunched up on the corner of the red couch, at the huge television screen that had what appeared to be Full House on pause. At the bamboo shutters on the windows, at the black cadet cap tossed on the coffee table, at the coasters scattered next to the hat that had 50's pinups on them. At the shiny, hard wood floors, at the slowly turning ceiling fan, at the rusty, exposed, yet oh-so-ironically-cool pipes coming out of the walls and ceiling. At the bag of cheese puffs sitting open in the black lounge chair. At the red hallway leading down to more rooms, all of which were behind closed doors. His blue eyes went schizophrenic until they saw something that made them stop. It was a shape, really. A long, long, long, skinny, black shape. A sheath. Propped up against the wall next to a light switch.

"Where is he?" Cloud was dangerously close to tears, and felt like the worst kind of intruder. Everything he saw, he was cherishing, and had no right to. He looked only at Zack and nothing else.

Zack had said nothing during all of this, but had just watched in complete amusement, "He'll be back soon."

A key turned the lock of the front door.

"Speak of the devil!" Zack shouted loudly.

The clicking of the lock sound sent a thousand chills up Cloud's spine. He stood in frozen anticipation as the key was removed, and the door swung awkwardly open.

A gas masked SWAT team member with long, silver hair swinging down his back came in backwards, holding several brown grocery bags against a bullet proof vested chest, and went strolling right into the kitchen.

Then slowly and empty handed, came out and stood in the large, empty space of what might have been a dining room. The gas mask tilted and a muffled voice came out, "Where are your clothes?"

Cloud turned beet red.

"Bathroom," Zack answered.

" … Why aren't you in the bathroom with your clothes?"

"Cloud showed up, someone had to open the door!" Zack sipped his soda loudly. "And quite frankly I hate your guest bathroom."

"Then fuckin' shower at home."

"Let me use yours."

" … Fine. Don't do anything weird, though."

Zack grinned and headed down a hall on the other side of the kitchen that Cloud hadn't noticed before. He watched helplessly as the crazy black hair of his lifeline turned a corner and was out of sight. Somewhere, a door slammed shut.

Cloud looked back to Sephiroth, who was still standing there with a gas mask on. Water rushed through the pipes. "I'm sorry..." Was the only thing on his lips to say.

"What for?" Sephiroth's gloved hands went to the back of his head to loosen the belt of his gas mask. It dropped to his chest and pale hair sprung up and out, as if it was happy to be released.

He smiled. Cloud smiled back.

For no reason at all, they shared a short little breathy laugh.

The first thing Cloud noticed about Sephiroth was his eyes. They really were that bright, impossible SOLDIER green, rested and almost playful. His skin was perfect and smooth as always, and this time it extended also to his soft lips, which were puckered gently to one side in a smirk. Cloud's eyes refocused from the delicate, angelic face to the harsh gas mask right beneath it.

Oh, yeah, Cloud Strife had a uniform fetish all right. And he had no doubts in his mind that this one was real. Black, bulletproof vest. Thick, padded utility suspenders. A tight black shirt that ended at his elbows, leaving exposed his long, lean forearms. Black gloves that ended just below the jutting, masculine bones of his wrists. Black fatigues that weren't exactly tight, but they seemed that way what with the delicious assortment of belts and harnesses tied around his long legs. The miracle of the way the buckle around his left thigh was fastened and the way Sephiroth was standing, a fascinating bulge was created between his legs, and it was observed for several moments.

Finally, some sense crept into Cloud's skull and told him that gaping openly at someone's crotch wasn't exactly polite. He tore his eyes away from it and back up at Sephiroth's face. And was surprised to find that those green eyes were taking their own turn running over his appearance. He swelled inside with pride and terror as he watched the eyes run down the length of his merit badge sash, across the line of his waist, down one leg to the boot, up the other, and back up across his chest to find his eyes again.

"Where's your costume?"

Cloud sputtered and looked down at himself, " … Hey!"

Sephiroth grinned, "It's good."

"Yours too! Is it … Real?"

"Yup. I borrowed most of it."

Most. Which of those items of clothing did Sephiroth just have laying around in his closet?

"What's that?" He asked.

Cloud blinked, "What's what?"

Sephiroth touched a gloved finger to his own chin a couple of times.

Cloud's tongue popped involuntarily out of his mouth and found his spike, "Oh! It's just a thing I got."

"What's it for?"

He shrugged, "Nothing really. Just for fun."

Sephiroth looked at it for another moment, before turning on his heel slightly, "Do you want anything?"

"Oh," Cloud held up the Yoo-hoo, which was partially hidden behind his leg.

Sephiroth's face fell, "I knew I was forgettin' something." He turned the rest of the way on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen. Cloud cautiously followed him.

Sephiroth had literally disappeared in the kitchen. The corner where it was nested was very black. Almost everything in it was black, including the cabinets and oddly enough, the faucets. And with the lights off and Sephiroth's getup, he almost looked like a disembodied head, until he got close enough to the refrigerator light to be seen putting away his groceries. All of which were liquids. Jugs of iced tea, Gatorade, vegetable and fruit juice, sodas, water bottles. Cloud peeked and saw that inside the refrigerator there was almost only empty containers of said liquids already in there. That, and things like butter and ketchup and one sad little jar of pickles.

Sephiroth caught him looking, "Gettin' over the flu."

Cloud nodded in heavy understanding. He'd had to do the liquid diet thing many times in his life, and if Sephiroth was anything like him, he was feeling like shit, and had been for a long while. Although obviously looking a hell of a lot better than last weekend, Sephiroth still looked too thin to Cloud, and just a little tired around the edges. A whole new world of guilt hit him in the face like a dirt clod. He had intruded into the nest of Sephiroth, who was sick and probably not even remotely in the condition to go out. The flu could be a real bitch.

A tremor of complete terror passed through Cloud's core, and he stepped closer to his beloved.

"Are you on antibiotics?" He asked, serious as a heart attack.

The handsome face looked a little surprised at the question, "Yeah."

"I'm from Nibelheim," Cloud informed him, "And if there's one thing I know about flu season, it's that mixing alcohol and antibiotics could cause intestinal failure! Or … Heart failure … " He thought about it then waved his hand dismissively, " … Some kind of failure!"

Sephiroth looked at him in wonder.

"Please don't drink tonight!"

A brief silence passed through the blackness of the kitchen, until Sephiroth sputtered with laughter, "You're an outstanding Condor Scout!"

"I'm serious!" Cloud whined over the laughter, then immediately went frigid when it abruptly stopped and

Sephiroth moved closer to him, and lowered his voice.

"It's liver damage, not heart failure. But I give you my word that I won't drink tonight."

Cloud's heart leapt with joy …

"If you don't."

… Then broke into pieces. He was from Nibelheim, after all. But he quietly agreed, " … Yes, Sir."

"Aerith just called!" Zack bellowed from somewhere in the loft.

"So what?" Sephiroth answered, exiting the kitchen to drop down onto the red couch. Cloud sat gingerly on the edge of it.

"Said she's almost here!"

Sephiroth gave Cloud a weary look.

"I heard that!" Zack shouted.

Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow, "I didn't say anything!"

"I heard it!" Zack repeated, and strode into the living room with a duffel bag, and now dressed as Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty. Black tights, brown boots, a khaki tunic and a red cape. He looked perfect! He hadn't put any effort into his hair though.

"Nice tights!" Cloud grinned, and received a swat on the head as Zack passed by to the window, and pressed his nose to it.

"She's here!"

"Better open the window," Sephiroth advised.

"Why?"

Sephiroth winked at Cloud. "So she can just fly right on in on her broomstick."

Zack gasped, "I'm telling her you said that!"

Cloud giggled in delight, and the two friends looked at him in slight surprise. They weren't used to having a laugh track to accompany their usual banter.

Someone pounded on General Sephiroth's door. He rolled his eyes, and Zack rushed to answer it.

When the door was opened, there was a flurry of pink, and the wet pops of kisses. Zack wrapped his arms tightly around the girl in the doorway, and pulled her inside. She was very pretty, and dressed as Sleeping Beauty. Again, not much effort in the hair department, but her pink gown was to die for.

"Aerith, that's Cloud, my little sister."

"Hi!" She waved.

"Nice to meet you, Aerith!" Cloud answered with a wave of his own.

Her dazzling smile dampened considerably, " … Sephiroth." She politely acknowledged.

"Hrmph," Was his own chilly greeting.

Zack threw his duffel bag over his shoulder, "The gang's all here! Everyone's probably waiting for us! Let's scoot!" He galloped a little towards the open door.

Sephiroth and Cloud stood up, and followed Zack and Aerith out into the hallway. While Seph fidgeted with the key and lock, the couple didn't bother to wait, and started down the hallway together.

Cloud was put in an awkward position. Scurry to tag along with the two of them, walk slowly and be neutrally single in between the couple and Sephiroth … Or stand and wait for him?

While he nervously pondered, the choice was made for him. Zack and his girlfriend had already disappeared down the stairs, and Sephiroth turned around, sliding keys into his pocket.

"Ready?"

Cloud nodded.

Sephiroth moved to Cloud's left side.

And together, they walked.

A/N

Chapter 7 Image can be found here! - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=120#/d1co9s4

1- Mmkay, first and foremost, Crystalwind, you made me blush like a schoolboy. Thank you so so much for that badass picture of queerbait Cloud! And Cannibal and Jaime, you are the wind beneath my wings.

2- Hiatus Excuse #1. Tragedy struck. I wrote this chapter. It was done. I was almost ready to post. Then…Microsoft Word ate it. :mourns: But then I realized that Word was trying to convey to me, in it's own hardass way, that it wasn't good enough. So, I rewrote it, figuratively and literally. And looking back, Word was right.

3- Hiatus Excuse #2. I have a convention coming up, and I've been working like the rent's due on a multi story SephxCloud doujinshi. I'll definitely put up some pages here when it's all done.

4- I hadn't really been inspired to draw the past couple chapters, but I couldn't even resist drawing Seph's hot ass in a SWAT team outfit. And Cloudy as a Condor Scout, well isn't that just precious incarnate? So, enjoy the images. Anything you want to see from chapters 5 or 6? Holla at ur grrl. I'll whip something up.

5- Again and again and again, and a million times over, thank you for reviewing. It makes Sephiroth really horny.  
Cloud: Someone register me an account up in this mother! ASAP!


	8. Cue the Gratuitous Sex!

Sephiroth would have been so laid. So, so thoroughly laid.

But sadly, even though the guy had won the genetic lottery, Zack never once witnessed his best friend use it to his advantage. Nope. Never. Not even to charm some extra cheese onto his Subway sandwich. If only Sephiroth would have figured out a way to tap into that power of his – God help the female population! The two of them would have been unstoppable.

It was an epic waste. Sure, the man had a few dates here and there … But Zack could tell he wasn't really trying.

"He hasn't met the right girl," Aerith had decided. Then her face lit up. It was a look that Zack loved, and was also extremely worried by.

So, Sephiroth didn't try. Zack on the other hand, had to try damn hard to keep what he had. Sex was one thing, but he had a big mouth, wasn't too bright, and had a dangerous job. Not many women were willing to put up with that in the long term. Not the way his doll baby did. He was both grateful and grim about this fact while he played nice at an arranged brunch, Aerith and her best friend gossiping in excitement.

"What's he really like?" Kristen had wanted to know.

Both women had looked to Zack, whose mouth was full of food. He quickly swallowed, "Why you lookin' at me? You know him, Aerith."

"You can explain better," She reasoned.

He wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to say here, and decided to follow the Golden Rule. What would he want advertised if Sephiroth was trying to convince a babe to date him?

The look that flickered across his face gave him away five microseconds before he declared, "He has a huuuge –!"  
"ZACK."

Intercepted! So, instead he went with, "He smells like cookies."

"Awww!" Went Kristen. Aerith made a motion for him to keep going.

Zack thought about his best friend, and how much he wanted him to get fucked.

Now, when Zack pictured Sephiroth 'fucking', what he really meant was 'tenderly making love' which would mean that Sephiroth would indeed be in 'love' and therefore he would be 'happy'. So the messy haired SOLDIER dug deep into the pockets of his memories for information a woman would want to know.

"He ... He's very polite and respectful. He treats everyone equally, no matter who they are, and he really listens when you talk to him."

Both women's mouths parted softly.

Zack was encouraged, "I have a picture on me! Wanna see?"

He pulled out his cell phone and found the one photo of Sephiroth on it. Zack recalled to the girls how they had spent several hours taking down a screaming motherfucking shitbeast. Afterwards, on the way back to the truck, Zack had pulled out his camera phone and threatened to take the picture, as a joke on how atrocious they both looked. To his surprise, Sephiroth had stopped walking and genuinely beamed, so the picture was taken.

On the small screen, Sephiroth was coatless and absolutely filthy head to toe. His muddy hair was tucked up halfway under a black cadet cap, battle paint that Zack brought for fun was smeared under both green eyes, and a vibrant splash of blood that didn't belong to him covered half of his face and clumped into his exposed hair. And with that huge cheesy grin and those perfect white teeth, Sephiroth looked to be straight out of an Orbitz commercial.

Zack didn't have any tendencies … But he could recognize.

And so could the girls! They all but grabbed the phone away and made high pitched noises of adoration. They also whispered intense, greatly amused words to each other that Zack supposed was a ladylike version of perverted musings on the General's body. What did they need to whisper for? He already tried to tell them Seph was packing.

"Here's the deal," Aerith said, more to Kristen. "Zack and Sephiroth are best friends. And you and I are … "

"Best friends!" Kristen squealed.

"So you marry Sephiroth, and I'll marry Zack, and we can live next door to each other!"

Kristen clapped her hands, "And I'll have a son and you have a daughter and they'll be best friends and then get married and then we'll all be a family!"

Both women looked to Zack again.

"Ha …" He said weakly.

Kristen leaned forward, "How many people has he murdered?"

That one caught him off guard. It wasn't something a SOLDIER talked about. Ever. He momentarily bristled at the taboo, then shrugged it off.

"… I wouldn't know, sugar!"

"Guess. Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?"

Zack had taken a big drink of his lemonade. He had to work damn hard to keep what he had, indeed. He had to sell his best friend's soul to the devil.

Sephiroth didn't seem to mind the devil that much. On their first date, a double with him and Aerith, he barely batted an eye. He wasn't dressed spectacularly, just his usual leather pants and a black t-shirt. He hadn't showered after work. Zack wasn't even sure if he had been wearing cologne or not. Sephiroth as usual, just didn't seem to try.

But for whatever reason, Kristen was fawning all over him at dinner, and getting quite familiar as they left together.

And unbelievably, the man had the energy to be found running on the track the next morning. Zack jogged up next to him.

"Soooo!"

"Soooo?" Sephiroth had echoed.

"Sooooo!" Zack said a bit louder.

"Sooooo?" Sephiroth droned dumbly.

"Get lucky last night?"

Sephiroth held out his arm and stopped cold, reverse clothes lining Zack onto his ass in the morning snow, then continued on alone. So much for polite and respectful!

"It's a valid question!" Zack cried, catching up to him and shaking snow out of his hair.

"Why are you so goddamn nosy?"

"Because that's what a best friend is supposed to be, jerk off!"

For the next few moments, the only sounds were Sephiroth's panting and their feet pounding against the ground.  
"I didn't."

A simple and modest statement to make, but his green eyes blinked two times, too many. A very small detail indeed, but one that told Zack the whole story before Sephiroth even knew it himself.

It wasn't that Sephiroth did not get lucky. He did not want to.

It was no surprise that roughly four months later, Sephiroth said this: "I'm gay."

And then, roughly four more months later, Zack said this: "Cloud's gonna be here soon."

Sephiroth walked slowly into the living room, in costume and cheeks still rosy from the shower heat, "Huh?"

"I told him to be here at eight."

Sephiroth's eyes were as wide as Zack had ever seen them, " … You said the plan was to pick him up."

"Yeah, it was. But then I started thinking about Aerith and you know how she feels about your driving … And your place is so close to the train station. It's more convenient to meet here and take the train, than driving aaall the way down plate, then aaall the way back up, and then aaall the way to the school, and then aaall the way to the spot, right? Right?"

Sephiroth didn't reply, because he was busy gathering up the assortment of cups Zack had been drinking out of.

Zack went on, "And then I was thinking that everyone might be a bit soused tonight, I really don't want to have to deal with people trying to bum a ride home with us, ya know?"

Sephiroth still didn't say anything, because he was fumbling with his vacuum cleaner and sucking up Zack's cheese poof remnants off the floor, off the chair, off of his lap, and off of his fingers. When he switched it off he growled, "You know, I really do think you pull this shit on purpose."

"What?"

"You just love to … " He trailed off as he dropped to his hands and knees to peek under the black lounger Zack was on, and pulled out a plate that had been bumped beneath it. Ketchup and pickle residue. He had found and consumed the only solid foods in the residence.

Sephiroth looked at the filthy thing and then burst, "Why don't you ever tell people the entire plan? Why do you like to spring shit on people at the last second?" He pushed off the floor and took the plate, along with the rest of dishes into the kitchen.

"Well I … "

"You forgot!" Sephiroth shouted over the running water.

"Aaalright, I did! But thank goodness Uncle Jesse was going to paint over the pink bunnies in Stephanie's old bedroom, they kinda reminded me of Cloud!"

"What the hell are you talkin' about?" Sephiroth asked with no desire to hear the answer. He came out of the kitchen and scanned the place, before his eyebrows bunched together in displeasure. He moved forward to stand on the couch cushions, and started pulling the pins out of the huge scary movie poster on his wall.

"What are you doing? Stop that."

"Shit," Sephiroth responded under his breath, more to himself, pushing the pins recklessly back in. "I don't even got anythin' to drink … " He stalked back into the kitchen.

"You only have shit to drink," Zack pointed out, following along behind him.

"But I drank straight from all of those containers."

"Ha! That makes two of us," Zack admitted.

"All I have is a Yoo-hoo and an old ass Cherry Coke … " He grumbled into the refrigerator.

"Who doesn't love that combo?"

"I have to go to the store."

Zack was actually quite stunned. Showering for over an hour? Cleaning up house? Rushing out for fucking refreshments?

Sephiroth was trying. For Cloud. Really? When he thought about the guy, he mentally saw a strawberry haired little girl in a ponytail. He didn't pretend to know what that meant.

But he took an honest to God look at Cloud Strife, the man. He was what Zack categorized as 'extra terrestrially' handsome, as if he had just dropped on in from another planet, and Earthlings couldn't quite understand his good looks at first glance. He was weird that way. Loud, and very, very loveable. Bingo!

Gas masks were used by SOLDIERs all the time. Zack was used to wearing them, and interacting with people who were wearing them. He could tell that Sephiroth didn't take his eyes off Cloud from the moment he walked through the door. And of course, Cloud's eyes were glued to him as well.

So, Sephiroth might have ruined Aerith's suburban, white picket fence family fantasy, but these two would make much more interesting neighbors in Zack's opinion. And while they were busy sizing each other up for the kill, he got to infiltrate the General's closet undetected and undisturbed.

Zack presently slung his arm around Aerith's shoulders, who leaned into him.

"Who's that guy Cloud supposed to be?"

Zack smiled, "Sephiroth's date."

Zack and Aerith were tiny versions of themselves on the sidewalk ahead, hand in hand and basking in the glow of each other's company. It didn't surprise Cloud that a man like Zack had a girlfriend, especially one as pretty as she was.

However! If some twat came out of the woodwork to try and claim the man beside him tonight … There would be a showdown. It would be a catfight, a dance off, a duel to the death!

He looked up at Sephiroth. The mixture of twilight and prematurely lit street lamps cast unusual shadows on his beloved. His hair was caught up in whatever light was nearest, alternating pink from the sunset, then glowing silver from the street lamps. The way he walked made Cloud almost dizzy. Sephiroth had missed his calling as a male model with that fucking strut.

"We're taking the train?" Cloud wondered out loud after the couple ahead turned into the station. It wasn't the greatest thing to say, but anything to break the silence was worth giving a go.

There was a sigh, "I suppose. But you know, Zack made a good point, we really don't want to be stuck driving home a crowd of hammered morons. Again."

Cloud giggled at the thought of him corralling, car pooling and dropping off an uncontrollable group of drunk, rowdy SOLDIERs, "Aww! You're like … The designated driver!"

"Never designated, it just happens. I don't drink."

"You don't?" Cloud gawked.

Sephiroth shook his head.

Well now he felt quite sheepish about his medical advice, but bounced ahead a few steps to walk backwards, "Well, good thing we're both abstaining then!"

Sephiroth grinned as Cloud stumbled and skipped around to regain his footing, "I was teasin'. You can drink if you want."

Cloud flushed at the appetizing notion of being teased by this man, "No sir! It'll be you and me and the hammered morons. It might be pretty entertaining!"

A genuine laugh, "Oh, it will be."

Cloud made a happy sound before smiling and they swung into the train station, where Zack and Aerith were having a heated conversation inside each other's mouths. Sephiroth stopped near them, not seeming to care either way, or just perhaps used to seeing it. But Cloud openly stared at the spectacle.

He had never before seen two people kiss so close up before, and watched it like he used to watch professional soccer as a child, hoping against hope that some of their technique would rub off on him. Whatever it was they were doing, it looked great. But how did they both know what to do? Were they breathing? Did they really have to swallow each other's spit? Cam's relayed experiences weren't very educational, "Wet. Good." No shit.

Their train arrived, and the four boarded. Zack and Aerith took a seat together near the back of the mostly empty car.

Cloud had a mini panic attack once again from being put into an awkward situation. Was he supposed to sit next to his beloved, or what? He decided to let Sephiroth make that choice, and slid lightning fast into one of the seats to the window, and busied himself looking out of it.

He felt the seat shift from Sephiroth's weight.

Is this a date? Cloud wondered incredulously to himself over and over in his mind while trying his best to look laid back and appealing. But oh … Even if it wasn't a date … He was sitting beside him, right? That fact alone should have been fuel enough for a lifetime of happiness.

When the train began to move jerkily, as if telling Cloud that it was safe now, he finally looked to Sephiroth. His eyes started at his big knees, then up his long thighs, to his hands laced casually between them, up to delicate tresses of pale hair framing a gas mask. Sephiroth's head was turned to stare out of the window of the opposite aisle, and the thick cord of his jugular peeked out from under his heavy collar. Cloud's lips ached to touch it.

Sephiroth turned his head, feeling the heat of a pair of eyes could carry, and one white eyebrow hitched slightly at the expression he found on Cloud's face. Then, he flashed a smile that might have been the most gorgeous thing Cloud had ever seen.

The odd thing was, it was a moment that he could almost remember happening before; the tremor through his body, the answering rumble of the train, the orangey purplish light of the sky seen from the window behind Sephiroth's head, even the safety poster in his peripheral vision.

It was déjà vu.

A stoic figure in a black cloak swung the door open and blocked the entrance, holding a clipboard, "Are there unanointed ones?"

Zack nodded.

"Come forward."

Zack hooked his arms around Cloud and Aerith and they all took a step.

The black figure loomed over them, "This is the inner sanctoom of SOLDIER. You are about to bear witness to our most ancient of secrets."

"The only ancient secret is that you drink cosmopolitans," Zack interjected.

One of the black figure's shoulders slumped.

"Aww. Go on," Zack said sincerely.

The figure straightened up with a flourish, "Bwa! The solemn acts you witness must be taken with you to the Lifestream. You must also abide by our game on this eve, as is tradition since the dawn of SOLDIER! If you do not agree, I shall cast ye away!"

"… Sure," Aerith said.

"Yes sir," Cloud agreed respectfully.

The figure made a flowy, dramatic gesture, "And the same goes for the anointed ones!"

"I do," Zack vowed.

"If I feel like it," Sephiroth said.

"Enter!"

The place was similar to the pub back home. His mother and her sisters liked to go out when they were in town. They drank. They smoked. They swore, laughed, degraded men, and his youngest aunt almost always fought someone. Older now, Cloud realized that those bitches had a rockin' good time. But to his childhood self, it was dullsville. He would bring a video game, or if he was really bored, sit on the broken pinball machine and watch the old, salty men play checkers. They'd usually tell him a dirty joke, he'd laugh, then they'd give him a beer. Success!

Here, there was that standard sickly brownish hue to everything and a haze of smoke in the air. People littered the room, half Shin-Ra employees, the other half was their dates, all of them in costumes. The bar itself was definitely unlike the pub's in Nibelheim, it was bright and multicolored lights glowed behind the hard liquor bottles, making them look too pretty to drink. There were sofas scattered here and there, a tiny dance floor, and in the corner a …

… Karaoke setup!

Cloud inwardly rejoiced. He had never experienced karaoke, and was already brimming with excitement at the opportunity to sing a love song to Sephiroth.

'He doesn't want you. Can't you tell? You have nothing to offer him.'

Out of absolutely nowhere, Cloud heard the revolting black fog of his chronic depression threaten to chip away at his elated mood. It always manifested itself in a voice, and these days it sounded less like the assholes haunting Nibelheim, and more like a dark, mumbling version of himself. Instantly, and to the fucking core, it systematically deconstructed everything he was feeling and reversed it.

'These people don't know you. Nobody in this room cares about you.'

Maybe he wouldn't feel this way sometimes if he had been happier as a kid. Thinking back to his wasted, friendless childhood, he wished to God he could have grown up with Sephiroth, Zack, and Cam. They should have all lived downtown and gone to school together. A cute, young Zack would charm their little group anywhere they needed to go. A wiry little Cameron would ward off the bullies. And baby fat kindergartner Cloud would hopelessly follow around a fifth grade Sephiroth, their fearless leader.

Oh, it would have been fun. But they wouldn't be who they are. If they all had the perfect, Stand By Me friendship, maybe Zack would have turned into a coward. Maybe Cam would have gotten into hard drugs. Maybe Sephiroth would have gotten fat and apathetic. Maybe Cloud would have turned into everything he hated.

Maybe he wouldn't be here with Sephiroth right now.

'The pain was worth it.'

The blackness fizzled out and lifted. For the moment. It was always sitting up in the belfry of his mind, waiting.

The room was happy to see Zack and Sephiroth enter. Cloud kept a shrewd eye out for potential competition. Although there were some women who came up to greet the General, they seemed to not have any unsavory intentions.

They moved across the small room to sit at the bar. Cloud didn't allow a moment for awkward hesitation this time, he sat by his man. On the other side of Cloud, Aerith took a seat, and Zack on the other side of her. Once they were settled, the bartender took a hard order from Zack, a dainty order from Aerith, and skipped over Cloud entirely to give his attention to Sephiroth.

"Can I get a pot of coffee?" Sephiroth asked. Of course he could.

The bartender eyed Cloud, who shot a nervous glance in all directions before saying, "Bottle of water?"

Then a man, who looked remarkably like an older version of Zack and dressed as Sherlock Holmes, come up behind Zack and clapped a hand to the back of his neck. Zack yelled in delight and gave him an affectionate hug, and received a kiss from the man on the top of his head. The man then nodded at Aerith, and held out a hand to Sephiroth, who took it in more of a brotherly grab instead of a handshake.

"When the hell did you get back?" Zack asked.

The man made a face, "Yesterday."

"Bad?"

"Clusterfuck."

Sephiroth and Zack chuckled appreciatively. They started up some shop talk that Cloud didn't understand and obviously had no business listening to or commenting on, and so he cracked open his bottle of water and took an uninvolved gulp.

"This is Cloud," He suddenly heard Sephiroth say, and then he turned to face Cloud, "This is Angeal."

The man tipped his head politely, and Cloud cheerfully extended his hand to him. Angeal took it with a grin and shook Cloud's arm all around. Why the hell did everyone do that to him?

Cloud smiled, "Are you Zack's father?"

There was a heartbeat of silence before Angeal made a terrible face.

Zack held up his hands, "Wait! Wait! What did you just say?"

Cloud cupped his cheeks with both hands, "I'm sorry! You just … You two look alike … And … You're … " His face spilt apart into apology and humiliation up at the distinguished looking SOLDIER.

Zack screeched, Sephiroth made a low sort of groaning sound, then they both were in convulsions.

Angeal smirked, "It's okay," And then he threw a punch into Sephiroth's shuddering arm, and another on top of Zack's head before leaving. Their laughter raged on, and Cloud pouted.

"Angeal is Zack's mentor," Aerith whispered to him. "He's not much older though."

"I feel like an asshole."

"Don't! Angeal's actually very proud of not being a pretty boy."

Cloud had to smile at this. Were Sephiroth and Zack considered 'pretty boys'? Well, they were certainly pretty.

There was a squeal of a microphone, "The hour is at hand!" The black cloaked figure boomed, "As is our rite, we shall call this evening … Internal Strategical Review!"

And everyone made an odd noise that might have been a boo. Cloud looked up at Sephiroth in confusion, who still had the sparkling smile of post-hysterical laughter.

"Have we the executive?" The figure called.

An older gentleman dressed as a pimp stood up and waved. The room responded with unfocused noise.

"Have we the 'Sir of Duty'?"

Cloud saw a SOLDIER stand up, the only person in the room not in costume. He waved a walkie-talkie, "On duty!" He happily announced.

The cloaked figure threw up his hands, "I so forth declare this holy SOLDIER gathering … A business expense! Tab's on Uncle Shin-Ra!"

Cloud didn't know a room of human beings could make so much noise. Once the room settled down, the black figure continued.

"Now, as is tradition, I shall turn the honors over to the Grand Poo–Bah!"

Sephiroth, in full uniform, was walking towards the little karaoke stage. And Cloud did a double take. Sephiroth was sitting next to him.

Cloud gawked up at him, and found that the General was equally surprised.

'Sephiroth' took the microphone, and his identity was revealed. It was Max, the dickgirl guy! "Greetings, bitches!"

The room went crazy.

Upon further examination of Max's amazingly accurate costume, there were flaws. First off, the coat was way too long, it was almost hitting the floor. And the boots were really far up his thighs. And the leather pants were slightly baggy ... as if they were too big.

When suddenly it became clear, Cloud gagged on laughter. He turned to Sephiroth, and was too amused to hesitate putting a hand onto his bare forearm, "He's wearing your clothes!"

White eyebrows shot up and then sent a poisonous look to Zack, who was trying to look innocent while his head was thrown back in mid-guffaw.

Max put a militant hand on his hip, "Shut up."

The room was as quiet as a bunch of SOLDIERs could become.

Max stalked back and forth across the tiny stage, "We're playin' Drinkieroke."

And the crowd goes wild.

"When I call your name, you will promptly report to tha stage. You will take an envelope from tha fishbowl. You will read it aloud, an' follow all instructions. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" Several people shouted.

"And if anyone wants to be a … pain in the ass about it … – " A lot of people joined in to chant that part, and it rolled off their tongues in one very Midgar-like syllable, "I will choke you to death!"

The room was hysterical. Cloud playfully nudged his knee against Sephiroth's, who was watching this all in gleaming, narrowed eyed amusement.

The first name was called, and it turned out to be a Turk, who sang a technoish sort of dance song, and everyone had to take a drink whenever he said 'tonight'. A girl was called up who started to freak out and panic, but Max was unyielding, and joined in with her to sing The Discovery Channel song, everyone taking a drink when they said 'mammals'. Zack was eventually called up, and he belted out Jenny (867-5309), but kept getting the numbers mixed up, even though he was being prompted right there on the screen. The one number he got right, everyone drank to: 'nieieieine!' Then there was a woman who had the worst singing voice in creation. There was a man who mooned everyone.

And then, an elderly man dressed as Cupid was called up. Cloud laughed especially hard, and stretched up near Sephiroth's ear, "He's my Algebra teacher!"

Sephiroth turned his face and leaned back, and Cloud's skin tingled at the nearness, "He was mine, too." The two exchanged bouts of crinkle nosed laughter while their teacher embarrassingly sang, It's Raining Men.

Then, Max called out, "Who is this Cloud Strife?"

'Oh, no.' He was initially excited about singing, but now in the face of his destiny he was petrified. Cloud flushed and looked to the real Sephiroth for protection.

"Better be prompt," He cruelly advised around the edge of his coffee mug.

Cloud slid off the stool, burning from the heat of a room full of eyes. Then people began to chatter. He was that one kid!

When Cloud took the stage and the microphone, Max bellowed, "The insolent fool who dared question my musical preferences!"

Cloud didn't know what to do, so he ducked his head and smiled shyly.

"You disrupted a school function! And you made a mockery of my hardcore speech!"

Cloud couldn't help but flick his eyes to Sephiroth, wondering what his reaction would be to these words.

Previously the Generals face had held the same smile it had all evening, but catching Cloud's eyes, it warmed, and turned into something different.

Something intimate.

Max had been dressing him down for several moments before his hearing fully returned from the rush of blood through his ears, and saw that the fish bowl was being waved in front of him. He snatched an envelope, and using his thumb, ripped it open.

Cloud read the paper inside to himself, and his free hand flew up to clamp over his mouth.

Everyone screamed for him to 'Read it!' 'Read it!'

"Don't try my patience!" Max roared.

Cloud uncovered his mouth and said into his microphone, "Pick a victim for a duet."

Immediately the room was divided into cries of 'Me!' or, 'Not me!'

Cloud fanned himself with the paper, "I choose … "

Not Sephiroth. No way. Not Zack, either … But he didn't know anyone else …

"Aerith!"

Her jaw dropped.

Cloud continued reading the paper," Take a drink every time either of us says the word 'love'. The song is 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls!"

Aerith let out an anguished cry, and Zack joyously knocked her off of her stool. Sephiroth looked slightly demonic in his supreme amusement. She huffed at them both, then made her way through the crowd, every step towards the little stage seeming to melt a little of her prickliness. When she reached the platform, there was an obvious question on her embarrassed face, which Cloud ignored to move closer with the microphone.

"Cloud sings pink. Aerith sings white. Onward HOOO!" Max commanded, then dreamy pop music flowed out of the speakers.

The words that began to slowly scroll were pink in color, so Cloud began, "Candlelight and soul forever, a dream of you and me together, say you believe it … Say you believe iiit!"

The color changed to white, and Aerith flatly picked up where he left off, "Free your mind of doubt and danger, by for real don't be a stranger, we can achieve it … We can achieve iiit!"

Pink again, "Come a little bit closer, baby … Get it on, get it ooon … !"

White, "'Cause tonight … Is the night … When two become ooone!"

Pink, "I need some love like I never needed love before!"

White, "Wanna make love to ya baby!"

Pink, "I had a little looove … Now I'm back for more!"

White, "Wanna make love to ya baby!"

The chorus had set off a wave like motion of elbows and shot glasses in the room, followed by the subsequent whiskey hisses.

Surely this wasn't at all the sort of song he had in mind to sing to his beloved … But pop music is literally engineered to prey on the emotions of sixteen-year-old homosexuals. And the next time he was prompted to ask for love, like he never needed love before, Cloud actually did. He belted it out like Benjy, all but screaming it. His enthusiasm spilled over the edge of his being and all over Aerith, who came out of her shell and really sang. Perhaps she needed some lovin' as well.

The song ended with a drizzle of pop fluffiness, and they gave their bows and accepted their applause. Then, ran from the stage as though it had caught fire.

Aerith collided with Zack, who was ecstatic to scoop her up and regale her with praise and affection.

Cloud slid up onto his stool, full of endorphins and hormones and testosterone and adrenaline and bullshit. When he looked at Sephiroth out of the corners of his eyes, he was staring back. Cloud put a hand against the left side of his red face to block Sephiroth from his vision, and laughter radiated from the General.

The lustrious performances waged on.

Someone sang My Sherona. Three SOLDIERS got up to rap, one of them had an obviously female part in the song, and informed the other two that they would be getting absolutely none of his pussy juice if they did not shower him in cash and bling. A woman dressed in a skimpy costume got up and her goal was to be a sexpot, but her song to sing was Loser by Beck, so she was hilariously thwarted.

After a while, everyone was far too drunk to really play much more of Drinkieroke. Max sensed this, and spoke as himself into the microphone, "I think there might be one more person who we'd like to hear sing tonight … "

Cloud looked at Sephiroth, and so did the rest of the room.

"General Sephiroth?" Everyone started pleading like children.

Sephiroth looked down at Cloud, "You want me to sing?"

Cloud's heart pounded up into his throat, and he swallowed it back down, " … Yeah."

The General got up and walked through the crowd as though he were walking through his living room in his boxers. When he reached the stage, he took a paper from the fishbowl and read it to himself.

"Nope," He let it drop to the floor and took another.

"Hey! That's against the rules of the game!" Max protested.

"Then I'm not playin'," S,ephiroth smiled with all of his teeth.

"… Oookay."

He smile vanished and Sephiroth continued picking through the fishbowl before finally lingering on one page for a little too long. The crowd encouraged him to read it.

He brought the microphone up to speak, but smirked in disbelief and shook his head.

'Noo!' 'Read it!' 'We want that one!' The room cried.

Sephiroth slowly sighed and read into the microphone, "Take a drink every time I say the word … Cock."

The room exploded in noise, mostly of the female variety. Cloud was unable to resist cupped two hands to his mouth and adding a little of his own. Okay, a lot. Sephiroth caught Cloud cheering, and waved the paper, speaking as if only to him.

"The song is Sugar, We're Going Down by fuckin' Fall Out Boy!"

In all fairness, it was slightly cooler than the Spice Girls on the totem pole of karaoke, so he had no pity for his beloved, and made an exaggerated gesture of shrugging. He doubted very much that anything either of them really wanted to sing was in that fishbowl, anyways.

The soft core little guitar intro started.

Cloud was on the edge of his seat in anticipation when the words started rolling down the screen, and Sephiroth drew in a breath. When the song first came out, Cloud could recall all the girls at school humming it for approximately six months nonstop. He would have been able to die happy never having heard it again. But now, Cloud resigned himself to the fate of having to buy this stupid CD, just to be able to relive the moment when Sephiroth opened his mouth and started to sing.

His speaking voice was gorgeous. A bit clipped and even at times, but expressive. His singing voice was his speaking voice, but with an extra flowy lilt to it. And he really sang it out, and way better than the actual singer did.

"We're going down, down in an earlier round, and sugar we're going down swingin' … I'll be your number one with a bullet … A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it!"

Not quite the usage of the word Cloud had been hoping for, but he went wild anyways, as did most everyone else.

The song ended and Sephiroth took a deep bow before hopping down off the stage. His eyes locked on Cloud's and he started to make a beeline. But was stopped mid stride by a table of people who needed to speak with him right that fucking second.

Cloud exhaled a breath that he had been holding. He finally identified the extra strange emotion he felt towards Sephiroth. He knew he felt love, adoration, respect, but there was something bitter mixed in. Fear.

He was terrified of Sephiroth. Scared to death of rejection, but like most people, also intensely afraid of actually getting what he wanted. If he had Sephiroth's love, then wasn't able to keep it … He knew that he would become a ruined, broken person.

Cloud felt sick. Then green eyes looked his way while he chatted with the table of people.

Another emotion bloomed next to fear, nearly smothering it out: hope.

Drinkieroke was over abruptly and with much less fanfare than it had begun with. The room was already degenerating into smaller groups, music came on not sung by amateurs, and the Shin-Ra Halloween party really began. Zack and Aerith had long since left to move around the room, talking and being the social butterflies that they were. Cloud people watched alone at the bar, feeling incredibly out of place. He had a marvelous time shooting the shit with the guys at school, but the people here were all drunk Shin-Ra employees trying to get some ass. Cloud didn't feel that he had anything relevant to say to anybody. He felt the strong urge to find the bathroom and hide there. Or maybe just split.

Sephiroth eventually made it back over to his seat, but was still dealing with a flurry of conversationalists. They were like fucking pop-ups.

"General Sephiroth, would you like to hear my idea for the – "

"No."

"It'll only take a second! I've had half a bottle of rum and I think this is going to be brilliant!"

"Okay."

Cloud turned his stool around, nothing at all of interest to him in the room anymore, and caught a glimpse of himself in the bar mirror. He combed his fingers through the fringe that framed his face, and swooshed it as best he could towards the right side. He adjusted his Condor scarf. He checked his teeth. He then leaned onto his palm and gave himself a questioning look.

'What am I doing?'

Everyone on the face of the Earth was chatting up his date, except for him. His date. His date. His beautiful, fucking date. He should have been closer to giving Sephiroth an impromptu lap dance, not teetering on the edge of being forgotten about.

Cloud waited, watching the back of Sephiroth's head in the mirror and the face of the current distraction, until the person grinned conclusively and disappeared. Then, Cloud swung his stool violently towards the General, effectively drawing those green eyes to look at him once more.

Cloud smiled shyly, "What do you collect?"

The eyes blinked, "Huh?"

Cloud then proceeded to tell Sephiroth all about his obsession with Nike uptowns, and his desire to own musical media, the most collectable of which happened to be vinyl.

"So, what do you collect?" He repeated, his face and body begging for conversation.

Sephiroth turned on his stool to face Cloud, boxing in his smaller, bare knees with his and using body language to deflect anyone who might try to drum up some chit chat. He took a drink of coffee, and after he swallowed, his mouth moved to one side in consideration, "Well, I don't think it's really a collection … But I hang on to ticket stubs."

Cloud smiled, "So you like going to the movies?"

"It's somethin' I do. You?"

Cloud shrugged a shoulder, "I've never been."

One of his green eyes squinted almost shut, "Excuse me?"

"There isn't a movie theater in Nibelheim."

Sephiroth became physically upset, "How do you people see movies?"

"I always just waited for them to come on pay-per-view."

Sephiroth turned to the bar, and threw back the remainder of his coffee, straight from the pot. Then he wiped off his mouth, "Let's go."

"Go?"

"Fuck this party. Let's go," Sephiroth made a motion with his head and led Cloud over to the table where Zack and Aerith were involved in another kind of drinking game.

"We're leaving."

Zack held his cards to his chest secretively, "So soon?"

"We're gonna do a movie. You okay to get home?"

"I'll talk care of him," Aerith bluntly interjected.

"Right," He responded, perfectly militant. He squeezed Zack's shoulders in farewell, and was again moving towards the door.

"Bye Zack!" Cloud hugged his neck.

"Peace out little one," He purred. Zack was a very cute drunk.

Cloud then turned to his girlfriend, "Bye! … Sorry for making you sing with me."

Her eyes flickered from him to her cards, "It's okay. I um … Love the Spice Girls."

Cloud gave her a smile that begged the question, 'Don't we all?', then whirled around to catch up with his beloved, who was entangled in yet another conversation. This time with his look-alike.

"It was Zack's idea!" Max was yelping.

"I know. I'm curious though … " Sephiroth was saying as he pulled the coat away from Max's chest and peeked in, "Did you wash this stuff before puttin' it on?"

Max shook his head, "No sir."

"Feel in the pockets?"

Max did, and brought out the plastic wrapper of a straw. Not knowing what else to do he handed it over to the General, who took it and immediately let it fall to the floor, "Those pants are dirty."

Max puffed out his chest, "I'm proud to wear your dirty pants, sir!"

Sephiroth chuckled, "You know I go commando, right?"

Both Cloud and Max made the same sound: "Guh!"

"… So please launder them before returning?"

Max nodded miserably down at himself as if he was now made of poison, and Cloud's mouth forgot how to close. Sephiroth smiled at the both of them and continued on the path to the door. Cloud was hot on his heels.

When they emerged from the club, it was rather chilly outside. The nippy breeze blew on the back of Cloud's bare knees, and he momentarily wished he had picked a warmer costume. Or that he could crawl inside Sephiroth's.

He let himself sigh happily, practically prancing along.

Sephiroth stopped on the corner and looked around in thought, "I really wish we didn't take the damn train, now. There's a good theater across the plate. Or there's a dumpy one around the corner."

"Dumpy," Cloud decided. The sooner he was in the dark with this man, the better. They walked a couple of blocks, then turned, then walked a couple more, and arrived at Galaxy Cinemas, Sephiroth's opinion of a shit movie theater. It looked pretty unimpressive to Cloud also.

"What do you wanna see?"

Cloud leaned forward on his feet and examined the row of posters next to the ticket window. There was a cartoon involving talking fruits, a movie about a bunch of pretty teenage bitches, a spy flick, a romantic sort of film, a big budget SOLDIER war epic … And two horror movies. Cloud had victoriously made it sixteen years without sitting through an entire horror movie. He was a wee bit afraid of the dark … And of … Gross shit. But after having seen Sephiroth's DVD tower, he sort of figured there would come a time when he would have to. But at least he had Cam and Psycho to protect him at night, now. And if he wasn't sleeping in the dorm, he would be in Sephiroth's bed, so what the hell!

One of the two scary choices was called Death Cane, and the poster showed a scary old lady brandishing a bloody walking stick. The other was called No Tomorrow, and the poster exhibited a close up of a horrified looking eye.

Sephiroth crossed his arms, "Death Cane looks stupid. Let's do the other one."

Do? Do the other one? Cloud smiled. Midgar dialect was adorable.

Sephiroth stepped up to the ticket window, and bought two tickets. They went inside and passed by a man who ripped them in half and gave them the stub.

"Are you hungry?"

Cloud felt all aflutter at being treated. But then something very, very male inside of him bullied its way to the forefront, "Are you hungry?"

Sephiroth got the hint, and after spending twenty five gil on tickets, wasn't about to argue, "Get me an Icee."

'Poor baby, only liquids,' Cloud thought, and marched up to the candy counter. He ordered a blue Icee for Sephiroth in a cup so big it could have been used as a blunt weapon, and for himself …

"Please give me that chocolate bar. No. That one." He pointed through the glass exactly to an especially enticing one in the row.

"Fifteen gil."

Cloud scrunched his nose, then looked at all the prices. It actually added up, so he forked over the cash. At least it was actually a legitimate expense!

He left the counter and found Sephiroth entertaining himself by checking out large displays of upcoming features. He was standing near a life size super hero cut out when Cloud approached him. AquaMan had absolutely nothing on Sephiroth.

When he handed over the Icee, there was a second, less potent case of déjà vu.

"Didn't we do this last week?" Cloud asked slyly when a gloved hand retrieved his cold, condensating treat.

Sephiroth smiled and took a drink, no less enticing than seven days prior, but now Cloud at least was mentally prepared for it, "Thanks again."

"You're welcome."

"Wanna go sit down?"

Cloud looked around at the little lobby and its ant farm-like corridors, "Where?"

Sephiroth showed Cloud his ticket stub, and putting his Icee in the crook of his arm, pointed at a number, "Theater three."

Theater three was located, and they went inside.

It was so quaint to Cloud, because movie theaters really look in real life how the look in … Well, the movies.

Rows and rows of red seats, a big screen in front and a bright little window at the rear. The room was empty except for the two of them … and if movie theaters really were how they were portrayed in films, someone was getting blown. In all honesty, he couldn't help but wonder if Sephiroth knew that in order to get the most enthusiastic blow job of his life, all he had to do was unzip and say, 'Suck'.

'I would choke down every inch of that shit,.' Then Cloud mentally slapped himself on the hand., 'Jeeeeezus! I'm a trashy date.'

The General chose the middle aisle, and scooted to the center of the row, Cloud following along right behind him. They sat.

Sephiroth put his Icee into the cup holder on the other side of him, and pushed up their shared armrest. Cloud inwardly bristled … Maybe someone was getting blown!

But instead of pushing Cloud to his knees, Sephiroth was using the extra space to … Take off his clothes! Even better! Cloud watched as he unfastened his vest, unbuckled the gas mask from his neck, and unsnapped some of the straps from his thighs. He rolled up the load and stored it on the empty seat next to him. Before finally settling in, he lifted his hips off the seat, twisted up all of his hair, and threw it over his shoulder as he sat back down.

Finally still, Sephiroth took a sip of his Icee. Cloud could have watched him do those little things all day. He could watch him wipe his perfect ass and be amazed by the grace and beauty of it.

The screen was smoothly transitioning between advertisements for sodas, and super easy movie trivia. Cloud rested his head back and let himself be advertised to, chewing on the back of his lip spike and just letting contentment and optimism wash over him. No amount of depression could deny the fact that yes, yes, yes … This was a date. He picked up his elbow to put it on their shared armrest, and it fell limply right into Sephiroth.

Cloud immediately retracted, "Sorry!"

Sephiroth's mouth was full of blue Icee, "Mm." He swallowed, and kindly put the shared armrest back down.

Well, that was no good. Cloud pushed it back up.

"You don't want it?"

Cloud shook his head, "No, it's okay. It's nicer this way. Airy."

Airy? Neither of them questioned it.

The lights went dim, and the screen boomed to life, deafening in the previous quiet. It was a preview for an action movie, followed by another scary movie involving fish monsters, then a gross-ish sort of manhunt movie, and a rather interesting looking film about the life and times of a jolly prostitute.

Then, eerie music filtered in, and a few credits rolled while scary images of eyes morphed into one another. No Tomorrow was about a girl who could see people's futures when she touched them. Between that, deadlines for the college newspaper, and her sexy/stupid boyfriend Brody, her plate was really full! But for some reason, every single person she touched this day was going to die in a horrible, grotesque way tomorrow. And she was trying to figure out why.

Cue the horrifying montages of death, blood, carnage, and destruction! This made Sephiroth cross his leg over his knee and slurp his drink loudly. Cloud finally reached for his candy.

Cue the scene where it's almost pitch black, but something truly terrible can be heard happening! The girl was screaming like a banshee but the only thing on screen were vague silhouettes. This made Sephiroth lean forward, and Cloud shrink down.

Cue the gratuitous sex!

"Yes! Yes! Oh! Yes! Ah! Harder! Fuck me! Harder!"

Cloud couldn't stand it anymore. He peeked over at Sephiroth … Whose facial expression could be described as deadpan.

Cue the chase! The girl was driving her car towards the power plant, trying to get there in time to stop the virus bomb, but the devil incarnate was trying to stop her and impregnate her with flesh eating little demon babies! Sephiroth slurped around the bottom of the cup, and Cloud folded his arms on the seat in front of him to watch in anxiety.

Cue the ball busting! The girl utilized every sharp weapon in imagination, and set them off in an intricate domino effect to immobilize the devil. She then ran in slow motion, tits bouncing like crazy, to disable the virus bomb.

Will she make it?

She did not.

The bomb went off. The devil's body died, and he took hers. She laughed, now possessed and surely full of demon babies, and went to wreak some havoc or something. The screen went black and heavy metal music blared.

"What!" Cloud threw up his hands, "What about Brody?"

"Fuck Brody. He's going to get paralyzed by the virus and eaten alive by ants!" Sephiroth laughed on a groan and stretched upwards.

"Ugh! This movie was … " Cloud sat back and searched inside himself. He hated it, but he had been so involved with it. So involved he was talking to the screen, giving Sephiroth confounded looks at the girl's stupidity, and even bouncing in victory when she chopped the devil's nipple off.

Sephiroth pushed down the armrest into place between them and leaned heavily on it, "The movie sucked. But it was fun, yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"That's why seeing a movie in the theater is so … Good."

Sephiroth still had his hair tumbling mostly over one shoulder when he stood up and began to put the stray pieces of his uniform back on. His fingers did it with speed that was completely entertaining to watch. In less than half a minute, he was good to go.

They left their trash and were once again out and about in the night. Cloud wondered what time it was, and on the same wavelength, Sephiroth fished a phone out of his pocket. Cloud peeked and saw that it was a little past three AM.

"I'll take you home."

Home. Let's go home.

When they got in, they would probably put some cat food in the bowls so the girls wouldn't start that infernal meowing at the crack of dawn. Sephiroth would shrug off his costume, leaving bits and pieces all over the loft, both of them too tired to worry about it. Cloud would take his off in the bedroom, feeling arms around him the instant his skin was bare. There would be giggling, there would be flirting, there would be kissing. But there would also be a 'not tonight, baby', it had been a long day. And besides … It would be so much better in the morning. Cloud would cuddle up inside a safe, warm cocoon of pillows and Sephiroth, like every night. They both would mumble 'Love you' before drifting off, like every night.

For reasons unknown to even him, Cloud's eyes brimmed with tears. Thankfully concealed by the dark of night, one fell, leaving a hot, salty trail on his now freezing cheek. He wiped it off, and the rest of the tears decided that one was good enough, and soon dried up.

The ride to the academy was a quiet one. They shared the train with quite a few other people, all of whom had their heads resting. One woman who looked like a hot mess, but was probably a ten any other day, was snoring steadily from the seat behind them.

Sephiroth relaxed back, his knees pressing deeply into the empty seat in front of them. Cloud instead leaned his head against the window, and watched the greenish glow of the city.

A thick billow of colored smoke puffed up from one of the reactors like a smoker's afterthought.

"I love when that happens," Sephiroth commented softly.

"Me too," Cloud whispered. " … I like when it makes the whistling noise."

Sephiroth whispered back, "That means it needs to be cleaned."

"Really?" Cloud laughed silently.

"I'll tell them to let it get dirty for you."

Words. Verbiage. Language. They could make a blonde blush so easily.

The ride was over in an instant, and soon a train station was a sidewalk, and street signs became familiar. Time was passing by too quickly. Looming above them in one direction was the academy. In the other, the Shin-Ra building.

Sephiroth checked his phone again, "Wanna know somethin' funny?"

"What?"

"I have to be over there in half an hour," He pointed to HQ and laughed.

That was not funny! "You have to work on Sunday!"

Sephiroth delivered a look, "Um. Yeah."

Cloud's face became a blender of regret and concern, "If you knew you had to work … We shouldn't have seen that stupid movie! You should have gotten some sleep!"

The General pursed his lips. He said nothing, but the message was clear. He was the General, he would sleep if and when he wanted to. Blue eyes lowered in submission.

… But the General was also his man, goddamnit. Blue eyes shot up and Cloud gave a tiny roar, "Then I'll help you today! Take me to work with you!"

Sephiroth snickered.

"You already know that I'm very skilled at making copies!"

Sephiroth actually made a sound of consideration, "They were rather well made … "

"I can do a lot of things. I could clean your office! File? I could test all of your pens and throw out the crappy ones!"

"I think … " They stopped at the black school gate, and Sephiroth swiped a card to open it. "That you should go to bed."

Verbiage. Cloud smiled audibly and walked through the threshold held open for him. Sephiroth followed along, and let the gate close quietly with his fingertips. Their walking became slower, more careful. Fingers were hooked lazily into pockets and belt loops. Cloud led them meandering towards the Rufus building.

They stopped at the entrance.

"This was good," Sephiroth said.

"Yeah! … "

A moment of silence passed between the men.

"… Sephiroth … " Cloud wasn't sure what he wanted to say, and looked up at the sky in thought.

The man in question kept his hands in his pockets and tilted his head, listening.

"I want to know … " Cloud puffed aside a hanging lock of blonde that blew across his mouth and interrupted him. He looked Sephiroth directly in the eyes, " … If … "

The gentle, radiating glow of his green eyes caused Sephiroth's black lashes to cast long, delicate shadows on his cheekbones. The beauty of it caused Cloud to lose all of his speaking functions, and he crumpled inside and out.

"What?"

Cloud tried standing up straight for a moment, but then he put his weight comfortably on his left knee again.

"Do you … Want to see me? Again?" He finally finished, and peeked up at the green lights. When he found that they revealed nothing, and there was no immediate response, he cast his eyes down and prepared his already breaking heart for the finality of rejection.

Sephiroth placed a gloved hand on Cloud's shoulder.

It felt like pure static electricity.

His eyes were still firmly fixated on the bricks of the sidewalk when the warm, heavy object on his shoulder became almost feather light, and glided down his arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps along Cloud's skin. He closed his eyes when smooth leather enclosed around his hand, and turned it over. They fluttered back open when he felt a pricking sensation. Sephiroth was writing.

"Wh – ?"

"My cell phone."

Cloud's eyes watched the moving of the pen, and he felt far, far away in his own body.

His hand was released. He looked at the combination of numbers that led to Sephiroth once, and knew he wouldn't ever forget them. But for good measure, Sephiroth had also written his name beneath it. Underlined.

"If you call, I'll pick up."

He turned his head back up to look at Sephiroth, trying to decipher the meaning of that statement, and found him with his hands back in his pockets. Their eyes met, and after a long moment, Sephiroth rocked back on his heels. It was a movement that was playful. Shy. Inviting.

Cloud took an eager step forward, and their thighs bumped together.

He checked Sephiroth desperately for a reaction. The perfect lips parted, and the weighted presence of hands on his shoulders returned.

After a deep breath, Cloud carefully placed his hands on Sephiroth's arms. They were unable to resist cupping slightly to feel the hard, rounded muscles beneath the surprisingly thin fabric of his shirt. Cloud gave a tiny shudder of ticklish surprise when he felt the two hands move across his shoulders, and down his sensitive sides to come to rest on his waist.

Cloud's body and skin were sucking in sensations and body heat like a thirsty plant.

He had never before given a touch to someone for the sole purpose of touching them. He had never felt someone's fingers gingerly stroking at his waist. Even the subtle sound and movements of Sephiroth's breath against his hair made his heartbeat pound in his wrists. He put his face near Sephiroth's collar bone and experienced the manufactured, standard issue scent of his mostly borrowed uniform, along with something sweet, masculine, and strangely edible radiating from underneath.

Before Cloud could censor the impulse, he put a kiss against the Kevlar. Then another on the gas mask hanging just below eye level. Then another on soft black fabric clothing Sephiroth's throat.

Two hands stilled his face, and tilted it up.

Their lips touched with tender pressure for only a moment before the more experienced ones brushed apart, and the smaller ones obediently following their lead. There was an electrifying first meeting of the tips of their tongues. He lurched against Sephiroth, who responded by folding his lips carefully around Cloud's, and closing off the kiss with a gentle pop.

Their heads moved apart long enough for blue and green eyes to search each other out. Uncertainty and disbelief could be found in both colors.

Simultaneously, two arms hooked possessively around the General's neck, and a shorter than average blonde was picked up by the back of his thighs. Cloud barely had time to register the fact that he was now the taller of the two before their second kiss ignited.

Lips accepted one another immediately. Cloud shamelessly reveled in the warm taste of Sephiroth, in the wildly erotic sensations of a tongue skimming against his own, and in the spider web delicate strands of hair between his fingers. And also in the remarkable truth of this realness.

It wasn't his hand he was kissing, it wasn't a shower wall he was pressed against, it wasn't a fantasy.

Moreover, he hadn't been rejected. Which meant that indeed, his beloved wanted him at least for right now, at least for this. Relief and joy made him curl his arms around the man all the tighter, and love him all the more.

With every inch of his body involved with Sephiroth, Cloud was only vaguely aware of the passage of time, and the fact that he wasn't dead from suffocation.

You can breathe while kissing!

He noisily sucked in Sephiroth-flavored oxygen through his nose, refusing to break the delicious kiss for a lesser bodily need. He could feel the pillowy lips smile against his, and they winded down and down, until their sore lips were simply but sensually lingering against one another's. And for all the intimate discoveries that were made in the past several moments, Cloud's favorite was that the much adored crack in Sephiroth's bottom lip was a scratchy little point of texture in the smooth cushion of his mouth.

Cloud kissed it. And then, he was sinking.

Sephiroth had loosened the grip around his thighs and was letting gravity slide him down, tightly pressed against his body. Cloud let out a tiny noise as two gloved hands followed the curves of his ass and lower back until he was on his feet.

The way they interacted reversed with the height difference. Sephiroth's arms hooked solidly around his neck and shoulders. Cloud untangled his fingers from radiant silver hair and let them slide down the back of his shoulders and arms, unable to get enough of the hard contours.

And speaking of hard contours … His own was nestled audaciously against a thigh that definitely did not belong to him.

But that was put aside. There were more important things to consider in this moment.

He needed to tell Sephiroth something.

That he needed him. To be his friend, his lover, his everything. He needed to belong to him. He needed to go on adventures with him.

Cloud opened his mouth, and this breathlessly came out: "I need to go on you."

"… Yeah?"

Cloud nodded eagerly up at him.

Sephiroth's left eyebrow hitched just enough, "I'd let you, but I have to work."

Cloud blinked … And made a terrible face when he realized what he had just said. Then he registered the reply to it. Mortified, and he buried his burning face in the bulletproof vest.

"That came out … Weird," He muffled. Laughter rung out loudly, the movement from Sephiroth's chest jostling his hiding spot.

"Come back," Sephiroth chuckled sweetly.

"No," But the blonde head slowly pulled away anyways, unable to help a little grin from spreading across his features when he found the completely delighted look on his beloved's face.

"Take me with you…" Cloud begged.

Sephiroth let a long, amused sigh out of his nose and the big, heavy arms loosened and became lighter on his shoulders. It filled Cloud's chest with misery, because it was the action of someone who was about to leave, without him. And if he left, this spell might be broken tomorrow. Maybe Cloud would wake up and it all would have been a wonderful dream, hellish in its vividness. Maybe Sephiroth would somehow die tragically, perhaps paralyzed and eaten by ants, and Cloud would never get the chance to properly adore and enjoy him.

'No.' Cloud tightened his arms around the narrow waist.

"Call me tomorrow," Sephiroth reminded softly, and his fingers spread wide and combed all of the blonde hair out of Cloud's face and held it there, manually tilting his head up.

"I will," He whispered through closed eyes, his face silently asking for another kiss.

He got it. It enveloped the moment, and lips caressed almost chastely. That is, until Sephiroth sucked in Cloud's bottom lip, spike and all, and moving his head slowly away … Pulled it. A sound more like a vibration escaped Cloud's throat, and he felt a shocking jolt in his groin as a similar sound echoed inside Sephiroth's mouth.

Suddenly his lower lip snapped back against his teeth, blonde hair sprung back into place, and he was looking at Sephiroth's retreating back. Proud as ever, but maybe an extra little swing in his step, he strutted off into the early morning darkness.

Cloud's heart was still racing when he finally worked up the will to go inside, but something caught his attention.

Deep in the brick walkway right in front of him, there were slightly smoking imprints of two size twelve Shin-Ra issue combat boots.

A/N

Chapter Image can be found here! - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=120#/d1co9te

1- My beta and I actually fought over the Fall Out Boy lyrics. He fixed it to 'gun', then triumphantly pointed out my error. Yeah, gun would make more sense, but the lyric really says a 'loaded god complex'. I'm sure it has a deep, deep meaning.

2- Wanna know what Cloud's singing voice sounds like? (Especially 1:31-1:43) The Kooks – Sofa Song

3- Wanna know what Sephiroth's singing voice sounds like? ( I like the barren dignity in the singer's voice, the young sounding twist, and the 's' sound in his speech) Minus the Bear – Pony Up!

4- Ohhhh my goodness. Your reviews make me joyous! Jubilous! Orgasmic! And by the way, Sephiroth hasn't come out of the bathroom in a while …

Cloud: Sir, are you okay in there? Are you okay? Are you okay in there? Do you need me to be in there? Hellooooo? :straightens out a hanger and begins to pick the lock:


	9. Mine Now

"Destroy everything you touch today."

He walked alone along the sidewalk at 4am, no one to hear the pounding of his boots or the song in his throat.

"Destroy me ..this way."

Not exactly a romantic sort of song, probably quite the opposite, but it went up into the air in such a way that anyone who heard it would have mistaken Sephiroth for a man in love.

"Everything you touch you don't feel, do not know what you steal."

Soft. That's how Cloud felt, tasted, smelled, sounded.. was. Soft.

There were things worrying Sephiroth.

The sort of evil nonsense a person's mind whispers when they've been hurt during their life, when they'd suffered because of others' lack of genuineness. Worries a person has when they wonder if they've given too much, too soon.

Worries a person has when they taste exactly what they've been craving. Soft.

Cloud had a crush on him, sure. Cloud wanted to kiss him, sure. But did he.. could he.. he was only.. he's just having.. he's just playing.. he's not.. he wouldn't.. he doesn't.

Fears.

"Destroy everything you touch today, please destroy me this way."

Fear made Sephiroth angry. And every stomp into the sidewalk was breeding more and more fear. By the time he reached HQ, he was almost livid.

"Seeeph!"

He kept stomping.

"You're leaving a trail!" Zack informed him.

Sephiroth stopped and looked behind him. Smoldering rubber. He lifted up his foot to look underneath. The sole was almost completely gone. Fuck.

His look said it all, and Zack burst into laughter.

Sephiroth continued to his office, less stomp and more plod, and perched on the edge of his desk, inspecting the damage and finally having something to actually be peeved by.

"Sidewalk turn to lava?" Zack joked.

"Just a little." Sephiroth said dangerously, and started to unzip the now useless boots.

"Oh. What's wrong?"

"Why aren't you drunk?" Sephiroth changed the subject, now standing in his office barefoot. 

"I am …" Zack seemed to be listening to something close to his ear, "..Sort of. But I'm never too drunk to come in and train the newbies with you!"

"Go home."

Zack gasped in delight, "I can have the day off!?"

"Yes."

"..I can't enjoy walking out on responsibility when you look so glum, buttercup. What's wrong with you?"

Sephiroth shrugged one shoulder, his mouth becoming a line.

Zack frowned, "No good? Your date go bad?"

A light came on in Sephiroth's eyes, "No.. It was amazing."

A slow smile crept onto Zack's face, "..Looks like maybe someone got a little.. hot and bothered!"

Sephiroth had all the facial capacity to blush, and did, "Very fuckin' funny. Go home!"

Zack was too drunk to know when to shut up, "Thank God you had on your rubbers!"

"Get the hell out!"

"Yeah! Yeah! And uh, Cloud's got those big blue eyes… you got any body parts that happen to be big and bl – "

Zack hit the deck to narrowly miss a fist, then high tailed it down the hall.

After brooding in the silence for less time than he'd care to admit, Sephiroth looked at his ruined boots, and had to laugh.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud had a thin sheet of sweat on his face from the various sources of heat on and around him.

There was a crack in the blinds, allowing sunlight to settle across his face. His pillow was body temperature warm underneath his head. His blanket was pulled up to his chin. And a little furry bundle was lying firmly against the back of his neck.

He opened his eyes to find that Cam's bed was still made and empty. That set off a vibration of worry in his stomach, until he looked at their clock. It was only a little past 8 in the morning, still fairly early. Certainly too early to start arranging a funeral, as his grandmother would say.

But Cam's absence was the reason behind all of this sweaty discomfort. He had pulled up the covers to his chin to ..hide. He left the blinds halfway open to let the green glow of the city relieve the ..dark. He had called Psycho up onto his bed to watch his back while ..unconscious. Now he was having a hypothermia to pay for his childish stupidity.

Cloud shifted to get out of the suffocating heat, and heard a little groan of protest from behind his head, and a thick yawn.

He snaked his hand up from beneath the blankets, and awkwardly picked Psycho's dead weight up. He gently placed the animal in the indent his head had left in the pillows, then covered him up, purring in the warmth, already drifting back to cat sleep.

Cloud got up and sleepily stomped into the bathroom, stopping at the mirror.

A tornado of excitement racked his body so hard he gasped.

He looked at his hand. He must have slept on it at some point during the night, because backwards on his forehead, frontways in the mirror, was Sephiroth's name and phone number.

He'd been kissed!

"I love you, Sephiroth!" Cloud wailed, falling back against the wall. Then he gasped again, shaking his fists in the air and patting down his hair, unsure of where to go or what to do first.

He quickly exited the bathroom to transcribe the phone number, then stripped off his sweat pants for a shower.

"Daddy?"

He stopped naked in the middle of the room, looking at Psycho, "What?"

"Where's Mommy?"

"I don't know. Maybe he stayed the night at home."

"Take me outside. I'll fuckin' find him."

"Let me get a shower first." Cloud said reasonably. Then he gazed helplessly down at the biggest, saddest brown eyes that the kitten could possibly produce, ".. Wanna come in with me?"

Psycho followed Cloud into the bathroom, where he sat in the usually dry corner of the shower. The water was turned just short of scalding, the kitten poking his paw into the spray to brush along the back of his ears. 

Cloud on the other hand, was busy drowning his face in the water and letting his hands linger around his neck and shoulders. He trailed fingers down his sides, then behind him. He cupped and squeezed gently, trying to reproduce the static electric charge Sephiroth's strong hands carried, even while completely gloved. But he himself was a boring substitute, and gave up to simply wash up, rinse off, and get out.

By the time they got outside, Psycho had forgotten all about the search and rescue mission, and opted to chase around the bright autumn butterflies. Cloud let the leash go slack, giving Psycho a wide radius to play, then sat in the fake upper plate grass. He watched the cat jump around, sniff, eat something, then squeeze out a few little half hearted turds.

Off in the distance was the Shin-Ra building, looking important and beautiful like most of the people inside. Sephiroth was in there, too. Maybe thinking about him? Maybe not.

Only one way to find out! And he didn't intend to wait another minute.

"Psychopath!"

Upon hearing his full name, the kitten stopped jumping around and huffed, "Whaat?"

"I need to make a call. Enough."

"We haven't found Mommy!"

"You're not even looking for him!"

"Christ Almighty!" Psycho bellowed.

Cloud picked him up and tossed his long, fuzzy body over one shoulder, and made his way to the house phone. At such a relatively early hour after a major party night, the phone was unoccupied, the nook in the hallway empty.

He picked up the receiver and held it in his empty shoulder while he dialed the memorized number. The last digit was a 9. His index finger hovered over the button for several moments, before he pushed and clamped his eyes shut.

There was the classic, generic sound of a ringing; two or three computerized, monotone chimes. Rather anticlimactic, Cloud expected something more like a gong, or perhaps a choir of angels. It rang again. Then one more time before it was cut off.

"Sephiroth speaking."

"Sephiroth!" There was just a moment of silence while Cloud clutched Psycho to his unoccupied ear, and continued, " Hello.. It's me, Cloud Strife."

Sephiroth chuckled, "I know. I didn't expect a call so early."

Damn it! Did he seem desperate now? "Oh. Are you busy?"

"Somewhat."

"I want to see you." Cloud winced. What the hell was wrong with his fucking brain to mouth coordination? He had meant to say something like 'So, what's up?' or 'Great night last night, huh?'. Something fucking appropriate. Now he did sound like a fucking desperate little stupid faggy –

"I wanna see you, too."

Cloud's entire face and mind went slack.

"You do?"

"I think we need to talk."

Psycho started to wiggle from being held so hard, and Cloud let him go a little, "Um. We're on the phone. Let's.. talk."

"I don't like to talk on the phone."

Cloud made a face, but he didn't argue, "Okay.."

"Are you busy this afternoon?"

"No. No way. Even if I was, I wouldn't be. Anymore."

Cloud could hear Sephiroth smile over the airwaves, "Alright. I think I can get out of here around noon. We'll have to take the train back."

Cloud's eyes went wide, "..Back where?"

"My place?"

Psycho was squirming and gasping for air, and Cloud loosened his grip once again, "Oh.."

".. If you'd rather not go there, we can go somewhere else."

"No, your place is fine. Perfect!"

"I'll be by around 12:30, then. What room?"

Cloud was surprised to hear him ask that, figuring he was all knowing or something, "207.. Sephiroth? Is it.. a bad talk?"

There was a moment of hesitation, "Maybe. Depending."

Cloud was dying to know what on, but decided not to press his luck, "Okay..bye."

"See ya." Click.

"Put me the fuck down!" Psycho wailed, all four little legs squirming with the will to fight for life.

They went back upstairs to the room, where Psycho went to wait in the window and Cloud laid on his unmade bed in near sickness.

It was now 9am. He had roughly three hours, and some very important decisions to make.

He went to his closet, and began sorting around, trying to find the perfect ensemble that would best tell Sephiroth who he was as a person, and also, that he was ripe for the taking.

After much deliberation, he decided on his black jeans, a recent favorite, and a white raglan shirt with dark blue sleeves. It screamed cute. It screamed date. It screamed, 'This is what your boyfriend should look like.' Shoes could make or break it.

Cloud sat on the floor, and started to hold up sneakers to the pants. He decided on his usual red classroom chucks, might as well just take the cute look to astronomical levels. Satisfied, he scooped up his clothes.. and then he spotted something that had been almost completely forgotten about.

He had taken great pains to hide the condoms and lube his mother had forced him to bring. He kept the entire business double bagged, on the floor, and in the corner of his closet. He gingerly picked up the package like an atom bomb. He took it, his messenger bag and his date outfit into the bathroom. 

After closing the door, he blushed for a moment, then reached into the bag with one hand, and tore open the top box quietly. When he reached his fingers into the box, he felt cold foil. He blindly grabbed it and pulled, and for some odd reason was completely embarrassed to find that condoms came a long, linked strip. He ripped one off of the conga line of humiliation and threw it into the darkness of his bag.

Would that be enough?

What if it was really good, and they needed another go? What if it was really bad, and they needed a redo? What if they messed up putting the condom on? If there were no backups that meant they wouldn't be able to do it at all. Or.. they just could just go for it anyways ..No! Safe sex is important! But carrying around too many condoms is trashy.

This is stupid! It's not like I'm getting any ass today! Cloud sighed to himself.

..Am I?

With a huff he decided that three would be a safe amount. One to mess up on, one to use, and one just in case they were sexual dynamos/failures.

After taking a moment to quell his fresh embarrassment, he took out a bottle of lube. He hadn't even gathered up the nerve to look at the stupid label yet. Pleasureglide. Pleasureglide? Could they have chosen a more humiliating name?

"Hold on Sephiroth, lemme grab the Pleasureglide! Still horny?" Cloud rolled his eyes and read the label.

Water based! .. Warms on contact? … DIGESTIBLE?! Jesus Christ, his mother had picked this out, what was she thinking? He turned over the bottle to see what horrors the back label held. For best results with condom use, apply small amount to inner and outer surfaces.

Surfaces. Cloud winced.

He was about to toss it into the abyss of his bag.. But instead, screwed the cap off, pulled up the foil lining, then twisted the cap back on. He squeezed the tube until some pushed over the top and sniffed it curiously. Didn't smell like much of anything. He touched a fingertip to the little dollop and looked at it. He spread it around on his fingers.

Mmm, okay. Pleasureglide. Gotcha.

So.. was this mostly for Sephiroth and his surfaces?

He played with the fascinating liquid on his fingers and thought some more.

No. This was all for Cloud. And his .. crevices.

Cloud looked up to the ceiling miserably. In his dirty, depraved, sexually inexperienced mind, Sephiroth usually jackhammered into him while he begged for more.

But.. would it hurt? Of course it would.

Cloud thought back to the kisses, the simple touches that enflamed his body. It couldn't be all that bad. Intense, maybe. He thought about the strength coiled up in that tall, solid body, and how little spurts of it was released through tighter squeezes and pressured flicks of his tongue. He picked Cloud up like he weighed nothing at all. And those goddam footprints in the sidewalk!

There was no two ways about it. Sephiroth was a fucking powerhouse.

Exciting! But.. scary.

Maybe.. he should at least be a little bit ready for it.

Maybe.. he could try it on his own first.

He undid one of his buttons slowly, before it occurred to him that .. he didn't want it to be like this, alone on the toilet with his jeans around his ankles. It was part of saving himself. Part of that not knowing. Part of his official first time that he had been wanting to give entirely to Sephiroth.

Millions of gay men couldn't be wrong, there was something good about it. If midnight cable prison porn was to be believed, something really good! He'd find out what.. with Sephiroth against him. Sweating. Silver hair matted against his face. And growling. And biting. And shouting profanities against God and nature.

The bottle slipped from Cloud's daydream grip into his bag, and he hopped to attention. He put on his second date ensemble, and fired up his flat iron. He had just started taming his yellow rat nest into something acceptable, when he heard the door open.

"Hey!" He called.

"Yo." He heard Cam's voice say. The tone made Cloud poke his head out of the bathroom.

"Where were you, snookums?" 

"Prison."

Cloud laughed, but Cam didn't. He collapsed onto his bed, Psycho purring and prancing around him.

"Cam?"

Cam propped himself up on his elbows, his face a bloody, cracked mess, his right eye bruised and swollen shut, "Didja know dat some people don't like da fuckin' Shin-Ra army?"

Cloud gasped and rushed over, "What the hell happened?"

"Some PUNKASS FUCKER we was with kept runnin' his mouth. So we hit da pavement on 5th street."

His usual bout of sudden shouting had re-split his bottom lip. He licked up the blood while Cloud looked disdainfully at his abused face. He had been showing Cam everything he had been learning in Hand to Hand, exchanging notes so they both could more efficiently kick ass. Apparently not well enough.

"An untrained civilian did this to you?"

"Naw. I put dat pussy in da hospital. My dad did this to me when he bailed me outta juvie."

Cloud felt a smirk tug at his mouth, but didn't let it fire up until Cam's swollen face beat him to it.

"Yaknow, I think even when we's get ta be SOLDIERs.. our parents'll still be able to beat our asses."

Cloud nodded, thinking about his mother, "Definitely. So do you have anything to.. deal with?"

"Wit da kid? Naw. He's got a worse record than me, so his parents ain't gonna charge or nothin'. And hey.." Cam's dried bloody eyebrow cocked, ".. Didja know we all got a license to kill?"

Cloud blinked, "..Really?"

"Fuck yea, we do. We's Shin-Ra property, we gotsta protect ourselves."

Good to know. Cloud smiled, thinking of something that would make his best friend feel better, "Wanna get some breakfast?.." Cam made a face, until Cloud added, "…and show off your badass black eye while it's still disgusting?"

Cam nodded happily.

They casually ignored the gawking of passerby as they strolled to the cafeteria. Cloud relayed everything that had happened the night prior while they hit the scrumptious Sunday muffin assortment and sat down.

"You's didn't get any free drinks?" Cam took a tender bite from his muffin, trying not to move his split lip too much.

"…That's all you're going to say?"

"Whaddaya want me to say?"

Cloud's face became overcast, thinking back to the past week and how he had supportively listened to Cam ramble on about Michele while he put pressure on his feet during sit-ups, and rode his back during pushups. The guy could drawl on for hours about boring things like brown hair and cleavage.

"You could say something more than that!"

"I been listenin' to you fuckin' yap about silver hair and long legs for fuckin' weeeeks. What - do - you - want - me - to - say?" He annunciated every word in the way that drove Cloud crazy with wanting to rip his tongue out.

But instead, he took a breath and leaned on his palm, "Maybe.. that I'm doing the right thing? That I'm not fucking this up."

Cam seemed to be searching for words, something he rarely did, and this made Cloud eagerly sip his juice, waiting.

"You're actin' like a pussy."

"Whaat!?"

Cam then donned a rather jaunty Nibelheim accent, "Does he really like me? He only gave me his personal fooking number, is coming to get me today, and has already shoved his FOOKING tongue down my face!"

Now a few of the Sunday cafeteria patrons were staring uneasily.

Cloud scoffed indignantly, then lost two screws in his jaw, and out came a bad Midgar accent, "Yo, help me Cloud! I dunno what ta wear, it's notta date, does my ass look fat in dese jeans!?"

Cam pointed an accusatory finger, "Grow a pair!"

"Gimme some credit! I kissed him!"

"Den don't get all fuckin' wishy washy about it, now! When he gets ya today, fuckin' lay one on him! Don't just fuckin' stand around and be indecisive an' shit! Dat's what I did wit Michele, and now she's my goddam MATE. Get serious about it, Cloud!"

Cloud spewed orange muffin as he bellowed, "I'm totally serious! He's my MAAATE!"

A guy sitting at the end of their table got up and moved.

They finished their breakfast, veering contentedly away from subjects of the heart and instead to the hilarity of karaoke and Mr. Green, the Algebra teacher. Cam retold his story in more detail, lingering deliciously over the parts where he partially scalped his unfortunate opponent. Scalped.

By the time they got back to their room, Cloud had about 45 minutes to sweat. He reread the more interesting parts of the music magazine he bought, he made his bed to perfection, he unlaced and relaced his red converses for maximum comfort and agility. He barricaded himself in the bathroom and re-ironed his hair, he checked his face inches away from the mirror for any sign of a blemish, then washed it again for good measure, he brushed his teeth for the full five minutes recommended by dentists, and he applied two clicks more than usual of deodorant. He was just about to re-re-floss when there were three sharp knocks at the front door.

He burst from the bathroom, and looked for Cam.

Gone! The fucking coward had split! Or.. he was giving them privacy.

Cloud went wide eyed and gripped his stomach, then relaxed in the knowledge that he was cleaner and more gorgeous than he had ever been in his life.

He opened the door. What he was expecting to find, he wasn't sure.

But what he did find was General Sephiroth. In full uniform.

Towering. Beautiful. A teasing triangle of his chest was bare, two brown belts criss crossing over it. One button of his black coat was done, his thigh high boots and pants clinging to his legs and between them, where Cloud knew nothing separated the material from his..

"Hey." The gorgeous leather creature said.

"Hi." Cloud couldn't tear his eyes away, but was keenly aware of about a dozen boys frozen with disbelief at the end of the hallway.

"Come in?" Cloud moved out of the doorway.

Sephiroth seemed quite amused at this suggestion, and entered. Cloud closed the door

"Nice." He commented.

"Did you ever stay in this building?"

"No, I was always in the Turk building." He said, and moved more into the room. Cloud smiled a little. The Turk building was notorious for having squirrels in it. A cute problem to have, but.. fucking squirrels. 

Sephiroth turned to look out of the window.

Cloud thought back to breakfast with Cam. What his friend said was true. He needed to just.. be bolder. The signs were there. He was here. And Cloud had an inkling that he himself wasn't too bad of a kisser.

Cloud crossed the room, and from behind, cautiously wrapped his arms around the General's waist.

"I'm glad to see you." Cloud said, voice muffled deeply into the leather and silver hair.

Sephiroth slowly turned around in Cloud's little embrace. Front to front, Cloud let out a breath, and did his best at meeting his green eyes. When they finally met, Sephiroth leaned down, emitting the slow, creeping sound of tight leather, and stopped a couple of inches short of contact, lips parted and waiting. Cloud leaned up to take the offering.

"Get offa my Daddy, Fucko!"

Cloud winced centimeters from Sephiroth's face.

Sephiroth immediately retracted himself and went rigid, standing up straight and searching for the source of the interruption.

Psycho was standing on Cloud's bed, little tail sparking, looking ready to attack.

Sephiroth looked at the little red being in wonder, and Cloud felt downright idiotic. Was he really supposed to introduce a fucking cat to the General?

"Psycho, it's okay. Um. Sephiroth, this is .. Psycho."

Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow, "You have a pet?"

"He's um.. my roomate's. He's a.. talking cat." Blood then rushed back into Cloud's brain, and his IQ raised enough points for him to articulate, "When he's fully grown he's going to be used in combat."

Understanding crossed Sephiroth's face. He crouched down in front of Cloud's bed, and pointed a gloved finger in Psycho's face.

The kitten looked at it distrustfully, not moving. Then, unbelievably, a little flame ignited on the end of Sephiroth's index finger like a birthday candle.

It was the first time in his life that Cloud had ever seen magic actually happen. It was like a fucking special effect! The little flame delighted Psycho, who started to purr like a motorboat. He rubbed his cheek against it in pleasure. 

Sephiroth gave Psycho a few scritches before straightening up and saying, "Wanna go?"

Cloud nodded, completely adoring, before a look of concern crossed his features, "Did you say anything to the.. um, mob outside the door?"

"Random inspection." Sephiroth shot him a wicked grin, "You failed."

Cloud smiled brightly and swung the strap of his messenger bag over his head. Then, painted a look of mourning on his face.

Sephiroth swung the door open quickly, and walked out into the hallway, a very large crowd gathered at both ends, every door open so eyes could peek out.

Cloud followed him out, head hung low, looking for all to see like a man who was being led to his own execution.

"Please do hurry."

Cloud winced at the words and, hands shaking, closed the door behind them. Sephiroth gripped one of his shoulders, someone at the end of the hallway gasped, and he was being half pushed out of the Rufus Building.

He pushed him right out of the front gate and out of sight, where the act was broken by Sephiroth's gripping hand trailing up to playfully tug the back of Cloud's hair.

After a short train ride full of stares, once again Cloud was in the dreadfully cool loft'o'Sephiroth. He looked around in renewed appreciation, while Sephiroth strided into the kitchen and threw his mail on the counter.

"So, sit down. I'll be back." He said, quickly disappearing down the other side of the kitchen.

Cloud took his time to stroll over to the red couch, casually letting his eyes walk over the things there were to see in Sephiroth's home. It was all exactly how it had been last night, untouched. Cloud picked up the black hat on the table, and peeking towards the hallway Sephiroth went down, inhaled deeply.

Dirt and cookies.

He put the cadet cap back down, trying to replicate the careless way it had been tossed, and sat on the couch. Without thinking twice about it, he kicked off his shoes and crossed his legs up underneath him.

"Tell me if you want anything." Sephiroth said, emerging from the dark hallway, looking fucking exactly like his boyfriend should.

He had changed into a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans that rivaled his own in tightness, then trumped them with cool holes. The placement suggested that they weren't manmade, or done in a fit of rebellion. They were small, and varied in size over his shins. Cloud couldn't figure out how they would have gotten there, but he approved of them.

He also loved the fact that Sephiroth was barefoot. No gloves, either.

A silver head poked out of the kitchen, "Yes? No?"

Cloud shrugged, "Bottle of water?" It had become his a standard, 'I don't give a shit' beverage.

Sephiroth came out with Cloud's request, setting on the coffee table and sitting on the far side of the couch, facing Cloud and back against the armrest.

Cloud reached forward, and even though he wasn't thirsty, opened up the bottle and took a sip.

"Sephiroth, what do you want to talk about?" He asked after swallowing.

"Well..first of all.." He leaned against the back of the couch and crossed his arms, "..I want to know what you're thinking."

Cloud chewed his lip, fearing this question, fearing the look on Sephiroth's face, but needing to be honest.

"I really like you."

"I'm sure you've thought about who I am?"

"That's not why I like you." Cloud said quickly.

"Then why?"

Cloud's heart hurt with the knowledge that his words could never express it. Sephiroth was like a magnet. Even wrapped in his embrace last night, Cloud wanted to be closer. The urge would have disgusted him if he didn't know for certain that it was a side effect of some larger emotion.

These things aren't easily said, and Cloud's voice regrettably wavered when he said, "..I don't know how to explain why."

Sephiroth stared at Cloud, "I won't make your life any easier, you know. I won't train you. I won't judge on any of your exams. I won't give you any credit for coming on my seminars. I won't give you easy missions. In fact, I'll probably just drag you through the mud with me."

Cloud's head shot up at that. But he didn't say anything.

Sephiroth's stare didn't waver, "I'm not going to come to your school and beat up your enemies. I'm not going to excuse you for skipping class, or flunking out, or failing to show up for a punishment. If you don't make it into SOLDIER, there's nothing I'll be able to do to help you."

Sephiroth let a pause go by before saying seriously, "Know now that your career will gain nothing from this relationship."

Slowly, a grin that looked like the sunrise spread across Cloud's face, "Re..lationship?"

"..Is that what you want?"

"Do you want it?" Cloud asked very carefully.

"If you want it." Sephiroth's stare finally dove to the corner of his eyes.

Then flicked back to Cloud's face. His big blue eyes were full of liquid, his still smiling lower lip quivering as if he were frost bitten, "..Do you want me?"

Sephiroth felt as though he were going to pieces inside, "Yes."

"..I want you!" The little blonde cried out before diving at him from across the couch, thin arms not being able to decide to be curled around Sephiroth's neck or waist, so settling for one of each, "I want you."

Sephiroth wrapped him up, "Then you're mine, now."

Hearing this made Cloud choke and clench on sobs that might have been half-laughter, tears cascading down his cheeks and into the black t-shirt fabric, every ounce of his weight shuddering against Sephiroth's chest.

Sephiroth was completely stunned.

For the first time without gloves, he touched Cloud's face. He pushed away hair and wiped away wetness he felt. In the softest voice he had ever used in his life, pleaded, "Don't cry. Hey. Stop crying."

"You don't even know." Cloud whispered. Before the General could wonder what those words meant, they were said again, and the blonde head raised up.

The look in Cloud's eyes put two blue knife wounds in Sephiroth's heart.

And then, he knew.

Sephiroth held him close, providing those hushed words and noises and strokes on his skin and through his hair. After a while, the weeping slowed then stopped, and the strokes were being returned. Cloud's fingers combed through silver and over the bare, smooth skin of Sephiroth's arms.

Cloud snorted in deeply, almost rudely, then finally sat up.

The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, the blues clearer than the sky. His little nose was red. His cheeks were flushed, lined on one side from the seams of Sephiroth's shirt.

"I'm ugly now." Cloud sniffed, a smile gracing his lips and turning the tides of his emotions fully to what they really were – happiness.

Sephiroth shook his head, "Not ugly. Never." Then he seemed to be thinking, "..I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Cloud blinked, "What do you mean?"

"That's another thing I wanted to talk to you about.. I'm not sure how to .. treat you."

A somewhat disappointed look crossed Cloud's face, "Because of my rank?"

"What? No. Because you're a guy." Cloud looked slightly confused, so Sephiroth relaxed and elaborated, "I haven't had somethin' like this with another guy. I.. Well, I don't wanna treat you like a woman, because you're not. So I don't exactly know what to do..What I'm allowed to do."

Cloud's mind reeled at the possibilities, "Do whatever you want." Then added, "Please?"

What Sephiroth wanted to do, was to cup Cloud's face and kiss him. That was exactly the right thing to do. Their lips and tongues met again, tasting each other tentatively for a moment or two, but that wore off very quickly in favor of deeper exploration.

Then what Sephiroth wanted to do, was to swing his leg on the other side of Cloud, trapping him between them. Again, great thing to do.

Sephiroth reclined against the side of the couch, with Cloud lying against him. Heartbeats and breathing and lingering kisses filled the silence in a way that conversation could never.

Sephiroth held up his left hand, fingers spread.

Cloud held up his right, and pushed into it.

They both looked at their touching palms and digits. Cloud's fingers, while rather long, were still a joint shorter than Sephiroth's. And Sephiroth's fingers, while rather thin, were almost twice as wide.

Sephiroth took a hold of the smaller hand, and brushed his lips along the knuckles.

Cloud was thoroughly romanced by all of this.

Sephiroth made a face, "And if I brought you flowers?"

Cloud's face went red as a rose, "Why not?"

"And you wouldn't be offended if I .. led while dancing, for instance?"

"..I would love to dance with you.."

Sephiroth smiled, "What if I wanted you to sit in my lap?"

Cloud, like a fire had been lit under his ass, moved like hell from his sideways leaning against Sephiroth's chest. Sephiroth chuckled as Cloud yanked and tugged on his long legs until he was in a normal sitting position, and then dropped onto his knee like a hideously overgrown brat visiting Santa Claus.

"Like this?" Cloud laughed, swinging his feet happily.

"No."

Cloud let his waist be pulled, and one of his jeaned legs be coaxed until found himself straddling Sephiroth.

"..Like this?"

"Yeah.."

They both smiled shyly, not because they were shy, but because they both thought a certain amount of coyness was called for. Once enough hesitance was given to be considered socially acceptable non-perverts, their lips crushed together.

Cloud was taller once again, taking delight in standing up on his knees and playfully pressing against Sephiroth's face until his neck were forced to crane back. Sephiroth retaliated by roughly pulling the back of Cloud's knees and making him fall against him. Things were getting better, easier.. more fun. He was prepared to lose his hands in Sephiroth's hair, before he had a thought, since they were speaking of boundaries and all.

Cloud broke their kiss noisily, leaning back a bit when Sephiroth tried to reclaim it immediately, and panted, "Hey. Am I.. allowed to grab your hair?"

"Absolutely." He said, and made a noise of satisfaction when the lips returned, and hands folded into and gripped his shiny silver tresses.

Cloud felt Sephiroth suddenly smile, and let him go when he pulled back, a naughty gleam in his eyes, "..Am I allowed to grab your ass?"

Coyness be damned! Cloud actually choked on air a bit and raspily cried out, "Absolutely!"

The kiss reunited and this time Cloud felt Sephiroth take two handfuls of him, and pull him forward until their chests, stomachs, and.. groins were pressed together.

Cloud's heart was beating wildly. He didn't break the kiss to ask, one hand emerged from Sephiroth's mane to feel his chest. Hard. And he knew from seeing it earlier, that underneath the soft black cotton the skin was smooth and milky.

Suddenly, Sephiroth arched up, reached behind his head, and pulled his shirt up and off. It was the most instantaneous wish ever granted! Cloud only got a short, delirious glimpse of nude torso before he was being kissed, consumed, lost.

Then he quickly snapped back to reality when fingers were hinting at tugging his shirt up.

Cloud bristled, and the kiss ended abruptly.

Sephiroth toyed with the edges of his shirt, "No?"

Cloud shook his head with genuine shyness this time. Sephiroth nodded and was preparing to move his hands to a more chaste locale, when Cloud said, "I need.. 6 more weeks."

Sephiroth crinkled his nose at such a specific time frame, "What for?"

Cloud ducked his head. According to Men's Health, his body type wouldn't see any truly exciting results from abdominal targeting until then. But he said, "..Dunno."

The raglan shirt was whipped over his head before he had a chance to blink, let alone argue. Then he was half naked, and none too happy about it. But his embarrassment wasn't long lived, Sephiroth's warm hands were on him, tracing between the newly muscular indentations in his chest, and over the hard, but still undefined contours of his stomach and hips.

Cloud relaxed, and took the chance to feel out the ridiculously beautiful body in front of him.

Ripped! Cloud thought without envy.

Nothing like a body building Bow flex gym meat cake, which Cloud would have been surprised to find on Sephiroth's thin frame anyways. The muscles were hard wired, deeply lined. Soft skinned. Cloud cupped and squeezed a pectoral, then ran his fingers over the small, pinkish nipple. He felt the surprising curve of Sephiroth's waist, the dips and rises of Sephiroth's stomach, tracing his fingers like a kid with a toy car wanting to go down all the different combinations of roads.

Lips reconnected when Cloud came across the teensy hollow where Sephiroth's belly button was. He wiggled his finger in there, feeling a tremble from the hard body and a chuckle in Sephiroth's throat.

Sephiroth immediately poked at Cloud's belly button. Then he poked it again, before realizing it was an outie. He made a noise to indicate that he felt the situation was rather unfair.

Cloud giggled and let his fingers linger over the indentations of Sephiroth's hips, then took their trail to travel down farther. The tongue inside his mouth became slower, unfocused as Sephiroth's attention was directed elsewhere.

His fingers hit the border of Sephiroth's jeans. They brushed lightly down the path of his zipper.

Then, they moved more to the right, feeling up a solid, thick shape against Sephiroth's thigh.

Cloud gave the shudder of a virgin's tentative delight, as well as the erotic discomfort of ten strong fingers digging into his hips.

Cloud wanted to see. He broke their kiss, which had become mostly the slaving of tongues, and gazed heatedly down at the thing he had found.

Supposedly, beneath his fingers, was Sephiroth's cock. But from his vantage point, it was just a shape, a hard tube beneath the jeans. He wanted more proof. He pressed his whole palm into it, riding the wave of slightly bucking hips.

Cloud slowly moved his other hand down. Both hands toyed and fingered the button on his new love's jeans, eyes asking for permission. It was in the realm of possibility that it would not be granted, this was happening rather fast.

Sephiroth eyes were alarmingly green when he said for the second time today, "..If you want it."

Cloud's eyes fluttered closed for a moment to collect himself.

Then his fingers and thumbs worked together to undo the only button in his way, and even though only one hand was needed for the zipper, both pulled it down to share in the flavor of anticipation.

Cloud touched his fingertips to the newly exposed bit of abdomen that helpfully pointed the way, down through a shallow thatch of fuzz, and farther still, down into the darkness of the opening he had made for himself into Sephiroth's jeans. His fingers hit hardness, and wrapped around it.

He felt an initial jolt of pleasure as if it was himself he was gripping. Then he actually gasped in awe. He looked down to watch while he slowly pulled out Sephiroth's ..

Jackhammer. Cloud blinked.

As if in answer to a prayer he didn't know he had sent, he saw longer, wider fingers moving to the closures on his own jeans. Cloud went dumb as Sephiroth undid the small, black button as if it never existed, and pulled down his short zipper, every little hitch of the teeth coming apart sent a tiny shock through the flesh underneath.

Cloud swallowed, and tried to prepare himself, but it was impossible. He gasped for air as he was touched for the first time, Sephiroth's hands still carrying that electricity, maybe more so now, and pulled him out.

Suddenly the fingers left him and pulled on his ass again, squeezing them even closer together. Cloud's entire body quaked, a slight bit of friction threatening to end his life.

Cloud's head swam, all cognitive thought muddied and distant. What was that friction? What was happening? What year was it?

He looked at Sephiroth's face, only to find his love's attention completely consumed by what was in his lap. Cloud followed his concentrated gaze down. Just like their hands had been so tenderly pressed moments before.. now they were pressed flushly together.

Cloud's mind stopped swimming so frantically, and he felt humiliated heat rise through his face.

Just like their hands.. Cloud's full erection easily eclipsed over Sephiroth's, whose was much larger. He had in all honestly been expecting that, but seeing it put on display so blatantly.. if Sephiroth taunted him, he would never be able to take it out again! And even if he wasn't teasing out loud.. surely he was laughing in his mind..

Cloud backed his hips up, breaking their contact, and a hand flew down to make a fist around himself, hiding it from Sephiroth's view.

Sephiroth growled, and smacked his hand away.

Shocked, Cloud released himself and felt two big hands yank hard at his hips, bringing both back together, and another brain cell killing bout of that fuh - fuh - fuh friction!

In a split second, Cloud realized that even though his cock was more ..modest in girth, it was still being held against the man of his dream's, and it felt better than anything he'd ever felt in his life.

Cloud hooked his arms around Sephiroth's neck and pulled himself against him. He heard the man make a low noise in response, and the fingers on his hips gripped and loosened rhythmically, almost pulsing, encouraging.

It was the motion of the ocean, afterall! Cloud didn't stop or slow, but steadily ground himself into Sephiroth's lap, using his knees and tentatively trying out a rotation of his hips.

"Damn." Sephiroth whispered, completely stupefied by what was happening.

Cloud became drunk on his excitement, both from stimulation, and the hungry look on Sephiroth's face. He felt .. sexy.

So he utilized what knowledge he had about lap dancing, which was limited to his imagination, and rap music videos. Cloud laced his fingers behind Sephiroth's neck and boldly arched his back until he was his full arm's length away, then rolled his hips in a slow, long, purposeful motion. 

This didn't earn him another curse word. This got him picked up.

Cloud's legs were already wrapped around Sephiroth's waist, and he was now being carried down that hallway next to the kitchen, the only sounds being bare, stomping feet. He closed his eyes and nervously buried his face in Sephiroth's shoulder. The feeling was so reminiscent of being angrily carried to the bedroom as a child for a punishment, that Cloud honestly wondered if he had done something wrong.

He opened his eyes as he was smoothly being laid out on a mattress, and covered by Sephiroth. When their eyes met, their lips reconnected for a moment, before Sephiroth stood up at the foot of the bed.

He reached under Cloud, and pulled his jeans carefully, but firmly down his legs, and dropped them on the floor.

Naked! I'm naked! Cloud thought in quiet panic.

Sephiroth then pushed his own jeans down his narrow hips, fully exposing everything. Cloud's blue eyes went wide when he noticed that Sephiroth's carpet matched the curtain.. a fact that made his groin begin to throb almost painfully.

Then they were together, hasty and clumsy. Their lips opened up, tongues and noises coming gently out of both to mix together. Sephiroth was being extremely squirmy, and Cloud looked to find him still struggling to get one foot free of his pants.

Smiling into the kiss, he used his toes to help the General out.

"Thanks." He breathed, taking a detour from Cloud's mouth to smash kisses into his cheeks and neck.

"Sephiroth.. are we.."

"Don't have to." He said gruffly against his ear before nibbling it.

That came as a very small relief..but.. "Don't you want to?"

Sephiroth stopped, pressing his full nakedness into Cloud's, "Yeah. But you aren't ready."

Bullshit! It was the one thing he had thought about since he figured out what these parts were for! He was finally with the gorgeous man of his dreams! Of course he was ready!

But his legs were vibrating violently around Sephiroth's hips. So were his arms, and his lips. Even his hair was trembling.

Cloud wasn't ready.

"But I do want to." he whispered.

Sephiroth's face softened, and he said, "I can wait."

The trembling eased a bit, and Cloud nodded in half disappointment, "Okay.."

Sephiroth smiled warmly, beautifully, angelically. Then pressed Cloud down deep into the mattress, his nose digging through blonde tresses to find an ear again.

"I thought we wanted to wait..!" Cloud moaned.

"For that." Sephiroth actually looked a bit peeved behind his flushed cheeks, "You tellin' me you want to wait for everything?"

Cloud's brain was once again suffering tremendous lag. He didn't know it, but it was actually a Strife family trait; arousal made him stupid. When he finally caught on to what was being implied, he locked his feet behind Sephiroth's back and bucked up, enthusiastically saying, "No way!"

Sephiroth was relieved, and went back to work on Cloud's neck. Cloud, now knowing that nothing had to happen that he wasn't ready for, began to test out ideas on Sephiroth's body. Like sucking red the skin of his neck and shoulders, like gripping his strong, muscular arms, like running his hands down his broad back down to squeeze his surprisingly round ass.

Sephiroth's cock pushed heavily into Cloud's, riding the force of steadily thrusting hips. 

Cloud closed his eyes and experimentally arched off the bed. Sephiroth's bed. He moved with him, complimenting his rhythm. It was good. But something was missing.

Forgetting that there was a perfectly acceptable bottle of Pleasureglide personal lubricant waiting in his bag for just such a use, Cloud went with his old stand by, and spat twice into his palm.

Sephiroth looked alarmed by this, until he saw what it was being used for. He waited, his long arms holding him up high, watching while Cloud coated them both. He took the time to really feel Sephiroth's full length, twisting his fist around it, pulling it, pushing it down into his own.

"Damn." Sephiroth breathed again.

Cloud answered with a groan, knowing that every single erotic moment in his life would be based around trying to prod out that word.

Sephiroth's thrusting became less controlled, and the perfect friction against Cloud's hardness was opted for a warm inner thigh. This was fine by Cloud, who lost himself to arching and pulling Sephiroth's hips with his legs to wedge himself into the crevice down the center of Sephiroth's stomach, every thrust flexing the insanely attractive muscles. Although it added no extra stimulation, just watching it forced an interesting series of noises out of Cloud, and wound up that familiar, but never quite so intense tightness inside of him.

He looked up at Sephiroth's face. His teeth were clamped down onto his bottom lip in harsh concentration, a look that could have been mistaken for anger if it were not for the bright gleam in his glowing eyes. Cloud wanted to know what he was feeling, but didn't have to guess. Sephiroth noticed Cloud watching him, and gasped out a breath he had been holding. In those two seconds, Cloud saw wonder, pleasure, amazement, tenderness – then the lines reset and he was back to business.

Intense, intense. A slow down to breathe and twirl blonde or silver hair, then intense, intense, intense. A quick stop for Sephiroth to swoop down for a kiss, then back up like a push-up, preferring to watch from high above. Intense, intense.

They were both guilty of putting it off. But they couldn't forever, and why would they want to?

No more breaks, no more thinking, to the point; a sharp, quick, intent thrusting from Sephiroth, a constant arch from Cloud, gripping to the coiled forearms on either side of him, digging his knees and legs into the naked man above him.

"Shhit.." Sephiroth groaned, and spilled out searing warmth onto Cloud, a stream of short gasps accentuating every thick spurt. Watching and hearing and feeling Sephiroth come was it, Cloud couldn't stop if he tried. His legs and hands gripped the man for dear life as the tightness inside of him snapped loose and spilled over. He froze still against the mattress, head digging back, a short word ripped from his throat over and over.

The word was, "Seph."

There was a slow, careful thrusting from both to milk them to full completion. Then Sephiroth came down onto his elbows, his hard stomach falling right down into the liquid mess they shared equal responsibility for.

He delivered a kiss that made Cloud's post-orgasmic mind swim.

"I can wait." He said after pulling his lips away, with the most satisfied smile Cloud had ever seen. They both chuckled through their panting, shy but not really, both knowing that this experience was just the first step.. and would pale in comparison to the things they would eventually do to each other.

"Oh, no!" Cloud suddenly cried, one leg shooting straight up into the air. On it, up to the knee, was a tube sock, two red stripes on the shins.

"What about 'em?" Sephiroth asked, pushing up to look at it.

"Our first sexual encounter, and I leave my stupid socks on!" Cloud complained.

Sephiroth then ran his hand up it as if it was silk lingerie, and kissed Cloud's knee.

"I hope you leave 'em on for every encounter." He said slyly.

After a brief clean up during which Cloud gladly didn't move a muscle, both laid together, naked as the day they were born plus two tube socks.

Never happier.

"Ask me a question." Sephiroth suddenly said.

"Like what?" Cloud smiled into his silver hair. 

"Anything."

Sephiroth, as far as Cloud had always seen, always moved with a coordinated, feline grace. But naked, in bed, post orgasm, he turned into a big, fat bear.

He stroked and petted Cloud's bare skin with his palms flat and fingers wide, like big paws. He moved lazily around the bed like he had more heft to lug along than his long, lean body suggested. He swung his leg over to one side of Cloud and made it heavy on purpose.

"What was your most embarrassing moment?" Cloud finally asked.

"That questions sucks." Sephiroth said lowly. Then mooshed both hands into Cloud's hair.

"I wanna know!"

Sephiroth huffed. "Alright. It was a few months ago. I was seeing a girl. And, I couldn't get it up for her. Happy?"

No! Jealously raged through Cloud like a wildfire, as off base as it was.

"..Are you bisexual?"

Sephiroth thought about it. He then looked up and down Cloud's reclining, stretched out body, "No."

"How many people have you .. had sex with?"

Sephiroth appeared to be calculating. Cloud looked at the perfection of his gorgeously milky skin, fearing the number to be outrageous. Fearing the number of people that had touched this skin, felt this warmth with Sephiroth.

"Zero."

Cloud laughed loudly, "Oh, yeah right!"

Sephiroth looked straight into his eyes, "Zero." He repeated.

"..How is that possible?"

"How many people have you slept with?" He countered.

Cloud pouted, "You know its zero."

"How's that possible?" He asked with more disbelief than necessary, running his bear paws up the inside of naked thighs.

Cloud wiggled, "Ask me a question."

Sephiroth laid on his stomach to think. Cloud was paralyzed. Sephiroth had one goddam beautiful ass. He felt a very real urge to .. bite it.

Not so much like a zombie. More like one of those old Gongagan men on the spaghetti sauce commercials, biting into a vine ripe tomato. He wanted to savor that thing. 

"When did you develop a crush on me?"

And the savoring daydream abruptly ceased, "That's embarrassing!" Cloud moaned, as if his question didn't explicitly entail such.

"Fuck that. Tell me."

Cloud sat up on the bed, idly running his fingers over the display of fitness in front of him, trying to veer away from that ass, "Okay…don't laugh at me!"

"I would never laugh at you. Maybe with you.."

Cloud scrunched his nose, then said, "Remember your inauguration to the status of General?"

Sephiroth nodded, though he probably didn't need to.

"Well..I was home sick that day."

Sephiroth made a face of blatant disbelief, but Cloud crossed his arms, "Not playing hooky! I really was sick…anyways, I was watching TV and then it started. It was on every channel. So I watched. And that's when I ..wanted you."

Sephiroth's eyebrows shot up, "Cloud, that was two years ago."

"I know."

Sephiroth rolled over, "Am I like .. your dream boat?"

"No!"

"Liar!" Sephiroth declared before yanking Cloud on top of him.

"You aren't grossed out? Don't you think I could be a weird stalker?"

"No. Besides, I wouldn't mind having a stalker fuckin' sexy as you.."

Cloud rolled over, pretending to hate the flattery.

Sephiroth grabbed him back, "Tell me! Did you have any pictures of me on your walls?"

Cloud laughed, "Nooooo!" And rolled over again.

This time Sephiroth held him down with an iron hand on the small of his back, "If you don't quit lyin' to me, I'm gonna smack that ass red!"

Cloud flailed, "The one from the TimeWeek coveeer!"

Sephiroth let him scuttle away, "That was a terrible picture."

Cloud stopped and looked at Sephiroth, naked, lying on his side, one hand propped under his head. That cover really was a terrible picture.

"I did what I had to do.." Cloud flirted, finding himself safe on the far side of the bed, but incredibly lonely. He crawled back over to press against his bed mate. 

A look crossed Sephiroth's face, "Did you have fantasies about me?"

And Cloud rolled over again.

Sephiroth spooned him this time, pressing against his soft, bare back, before tucking Cloud's hair pristinely behind one ear, and whispering into it, "Would it surprise you to know that I've had fantasies about you?"

"..Not surprised.. but interested." Cloud said, with his own little version of slyness.

Sephiroth appreciated it, "Maybe someday I'll tell you all about 'em..if you tell me all about yours."

Cloud turned in his arms, "..You're better than my fantasies, Sephiroth."

He grinned, "I thought you were callin' me Seph, now."

Cloud looked confused, then remembered, and felt a small amount of heat rise in his cheeks, "Which do you prefer?"

"I like how you say my name." Then he imitated it, rolling the 'r', "But I like Seph, too. It's what friends call me."

"And boyfriends." Cloud added hopefully.

"Boyfriends." Sephiroth echoed, and made a face, "That sounds so.. juvenile."

Cloud's face fell a bit. He was juvenile, "Would you rather be significant others?"

"How 'bout faggots in love?"

This shocked laughter out of both of them, and once it died down, a word hung in the air.

Love.

"You're my dear." Cloud decided, borrowing dialect from his homeland.

"Good." Sephiroth said, running hands down bare arms, "Better be your only dear."

Cloud almost purred at the possessiveness, "Only dear."

"I'm away a lot." Sephiroth said simply.

Cloud held onto him, knowing what that meant. More things for them to sort out, "I know. But Midgar your home.. right?"

Sephiroth smiled, "It's home."

"I'll always wait for you." Cloud said sincerely, envisioning himself in a smoky train station, waving a hankie at the departing train carrying his beloved to war.

"You better." Sephiroth said, squeezing him tightly, "You're mine, now."

Cloud's eyes began to warble again.

"..Shit."

"I'm so fucking happy, Seph!" Cloud said, his voice creaking badly.

"Happy people don't cry!"

"I do!" And a tear spurted out of his blue eye. He sniffed hard, and the rest seemed controllable. Sephiroth sighed in relief, kissing warm skin and enjoying the newness of Cloud's touch until the blue eyes held nothing but happiness. Dry happiness.

Sephiroth leaned up and over his shoulder, "Are you hungry? I'm fuckin' hungry."

"Can you eat food?"

"Doctor said Monday. It's Monday somewhere." He growled, and swung his legs off the bed. Cloud watched his rippling nudity and succulent looking, upside down heart shaped ass stand up. Then Sephiroth bent over, picking up his jeans and making the whole situation look fucking irresistible. Cloud made a vow to one day sink his teeth into that thing, preferably down the road when Sephiroth wouldn't be freaked out by the weirdness, and also when Cloud would be stronger and could hold him down to fully enjoy. He wanted to leave fucking teeth imprints.

The buns then disappeared through a doorway, where a light came on. Bathroom.

Cloud blinked and realized he hadn't even nosily examined Sephiroth's bedroom. He realized why, there really wasn't too much to see, it seemed like a room decorated and meant just for relaxation and sleep. And sex, now. There was his bed, modernish design, black, cool sheets rumpled and a black comforter bunched haphazardly to one side.

To Cloud, who knew exactly why it was so unmade, it looked like art.

There was a cabinet with doors across from the bed, looking like it housed a television. There was a little table next to the bed with a clock on it. It was 4 in the afternoon. There was another door, probably to a closet. Big windows lined one wall, none quite exactly giving a view of the bed, but all completely uncovered, all letting in the orange, late afternoon light.

God bless the window washers today. Cloud thought, smiling to himself and stretching until he was completely sprawled out across the bed.

Sephiroth came out of the bathroom following a flush, and with his jeans on. He looked at the display, "I dunno about you, but I don't feel like goin' anywhere."

Cloud shook his head 'no' with a lazy grin.

Sephiroth, regaining his feline swagger, crawled onto the bed and made himself at home between Cloud's legs once again.

"Wanna do pizza?"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

General Sephiroth's truck departed the parking garage of the Crosswaves Condominium complex at 8:05pm. Passengers; General Sephiroth, Cloud Strife.

The truck took the most direct route to the Shin-Ra Military Academy. Arrived at 8:34pm.

From 8:34pm until 9:07pm, General Sephiroth's truck idled in the faculty parking lot.

At 9:07pm, Cloud Strife exited the vehicle.

At 9:07pm, General Sephiroth rolled down the driver side window, and made communication with Cloud Strife.

At 9:08pm, Cloud Strife re-entered the vehicle via the driver side window. 

From 9:08pm until 9:54pm, General Sephiroth's truck continued to idle in the faculty parking lot.

At 9:54pm, Cloud Strife exited the vehicle a second time. He immediately began to run on foot. Updated his status to 'target'. Aimed all rifles, waited for ground confirmation of General Sephiroth's safety.

At 9:54pm, General Sephiroth's truck departed the Academy parking lot, took the most direct route back to Crosswaves.

Report : No ground confirmation was made of General Sephiroth's safety, but no erratic driving patterns were seen. Cloud Strife ran directly to Rufus Building, arrived at 9:58 pm. We're to assume that the target fled to reach his bed before lights out, which is 10pm Sunday through Thursday nights. No conversation of a military or confidential nature was detected through our lip reading department. In fact, General Sephiroth and Cloud Strife seem to be able to read each other's lips just fine.

"I need a day off."

"Fucking tell me about it."

Two images for Chapter 9!

Sweet… owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-9-sweet-81754089

…And sour … owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-9-SOUR-81754171

A/N

1- 1- For me, this is where the story actually begins. I'll also say that I'm planning a sequel, so Blonde Ambition is far from over.

2- 2- The song Sephiroth is singing in the beginning is Destroy Everything You Touch - Ladytron

3- 3- "Stop crying." A throw back to Advent Children. I always wished that phrase had a deeper meaning that wasn't conveyed in the movie, so I used it here.

4- 4- Right now my robots are vacationing off the coast, so I'm using the energy from your reviews to power my money printing press, so I can quit my job and just write fanfiction and draw lemons for you guys all day. Life is rad!


	10. Hellogoodbye

It never takes long to fall in love. Or, as the old farts say in Nibelheim, to become the dears of each other's eyes.

Cloud's love was a bodily sensation. It felt tight in the chest, giddy in the head, ached in the lips, burned in his heart. It felt fierce and desperate, wonderful. He felt he could get fat on the utterly sweet feeling of being wanted. Not to mention the practically caloric joy of being kissed and touched and pawed at by a man he had desired badly enough to weep buckets of tears for.

Sephiroth's love was a blanket covering the coldness that previously prevailed. In past relationships, it took weeks to even build up the trust in someone to touch so intimately, to cuddle them, to play. Cloud warmed him up effortlessly, too soft to not touch, too adorable to not cuddle, and way too much fun to not play with. Not to mention how much he liked the fact that at some moments, Cloud seemed like a living, breathing stuffed animal, and at others, he oozed sexuality in a way that couldn't be ignored.

Ding dong, the pizza arrived. Emotional upheaval, extreme foreplay, orgasms, and flirtatious rambunction in one afternoon is all very hungry business. They sat down on the couch to eat, and the interview session continued on. Sephiroth didn't turn on the TV as a distraction, he was content with their natural script and the soundtrack of their own voices.

"What's your favorite movie?" Sephiroth asked.

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit!" Cloud didn't hesitate to declare, "Hands down! ..I'm guessing you like The Omen." He pointed behind them and up to the blood red poster that just might have been as tall as he was. Sephiroth nodded, mouth full of pizza.

The way he ate was precious to Cloud. It was always three huge bites, a jaw churning open mouthed chew, then he would put down his slice and swallow tiny bits at a time.

Cloud sighed and looked around the room for inspiration for his next question. It popped into his head suddenly, and unprompted, "..Was your first kiss any good?"

"Hell, no. I got it when I was headed out to my first mission. This MSO girl just kinda grabbed me out of nowhere." Sephiroth grimaced for comic effect, then softened, "What about yours?"

Cloud considered an immediately truthful answer, but the completely innocent, unassuming look on Sephiroth's face made him decide that this opportunity to tease was far too golden to waste.

He manufactured a long, dreamy sigh, "Perfect.."

A white eyebrow popped up curiously, "Yeah?"

Cloud laced his fingers behind his head and laid against the couch, "Oh, yeah. He was the hottest man I have ever seen in my life."

Sephiroth loudly sucked something out of his teeth, "Hrm."

"He was a big.. tall.. sexy.." Cloud guffawed inwardly at the overcast look that was threatening to cross his beloved's face, then continued gazing wistfully off into the distance, "..SWAT team member."

Sephiroth stared in obvious surprise. Cloud grinned back at him. 

He assumed Cloud was at least as new as he was in more intimate things, but he was certain that he wouldn't have been his first kiss. He was ridiculously beautiful. And damn good.

Something like greedy pride overcame Sephiroth, and he leaned forward in a shark-like manner. Their smiling lips melted sweetly together.

Then Sephiroth suddenly pulled back and fumed, "I refuse to believe nobody else has kissed you. Not even some girl back home?"

Cloud laughed loudly, "No! Everyone hates my guts back home."

"Why?"

Cloud groaned, "Lots of reasons.. I've always been a total flamer," Sephiroth snickered at this, and Cloud bumped his knee into his before continuing ".. so I got kicked around.. you know? Oh. You probably don't. But.. I just sort of shut down for most of my life. I'm the town weirdo."

"Clearly."

"You like it!.. So, what's your family like?"

Sephiroth reached for another slice, "My father's a Turk."

"Really!" Cloud sat up straighter to better absorb information.

"Yeah. He's a great guy. Really cool. I haven't seen him in a long while, though. Since I graduated the academy, actually."

"How come?"

"We had a disagreement that day." Sephiroth stuffed half the pizza slice in his mouth "And my mother passed away when she had me."

Cloud would have felt compelled to try and console Sephiroth, offer up some sort of useless words of compassion, but he did not seem bothered at all by either of his parental situations. So Cloud simply reached for another slice himself, and left the silence open for Sephiroth to say more if he wanted to.

"You didn't mention your dad." He said at last.

Cloud took a sip of water, "Oh. I don't really have a dad. He and my mom separated when I was a baby. He's a drummer?" Cloud shrugged, ".. an architect? Who knows."

Sephiroth made a thoughtful sound, "A drummer?"

"I guess he used to be." Cloud amended.

"Do you drum?"

Cloud looked as though it had just suggested that they go get a couple of cheap hookers, "Huh? No."

Sephiroth said no more about it.

Cloud tossed a crust into the now empty pizza box, "Okay, you might be mad. But .. I accidentally overheard Nurse Rhonda mention that you're 22 years old. Why do all the papers say you're 25?"

Sephiroth blinked, "Do they?"

Cloud nodded, "You don't read them?"

Sephiroth took Cloud's discarded crust, "Fuck no. I hate the bullshit they write about me. They don't check their facts about anything, they probably just assume I'm 25. I joined the army at 13, not 16. So." Chomp, chomp, chomp.

Cloud pouted, not at all surprised that Sephiroth would have been recruited at such a young age. It took Cloud every bit of courage and will he had to be recruited at this age. He knew of some guys that were younger than 16, and usually they were big for their age, or extremely skilled, "I wish I could have joined that early. I'd be a third class SOLDIER by now!" He threw back his head and groaned loudly in longing. 

That visual made Sephiroth take a long pause in his chewing.

It had been a reluctant suggestion to take Cloud back home. But, that was indeed the reality of their situation: curfews on school nights. There was also another very sad reality, and Sephiroth didn't tell Cloud until they left the loft and were on their way to the parking garage.

"Two weeks!?"

"Give or take." Seph rubbed his thumb over the knuckles of the soft hand that had found it's way into his.

Cloud made a miserable face, "Why didn't you say anything sooner?"

"What for? Besides, there's good news."

Cloud perked up at this.

"I've been gone a lot recently 'cause fall is promotion season, right?"

Cloud nodded, he knew this. Every fall, the military personnel got their chance to submit requests and nominations for promotions and raises, or sadly, demotions. But most importantly, late summer was when the SOLDIER exam took place, and in the fall all third years who made it were promoted to junior SOLDIERs. That was their cue to turn into total shitheads.

"Well, this is my last trip for the fall. When I come back, I'll be stationed for a while." Sephiroth said this in a way that suggested he wasn't relieved only for Cloud's sake. Cloud then realized that they had been out all last night, Sephiroth had worked that morning, and now they had spent this entire evening together. Who knew how long it had been since Sephiroth last slept?

Did the General have room in his busy life for this? Cloud had a fretful moment.

But then he couldn't help but notice the way Sephiroth's hips moved as he walked.. and visions of them bare and grinding against his own were strong enough to make his throat tighten.

He could totally live with being a little selfish! "You said give or take. Maybe it won't be the whole two weeks!"

"It's the Junon base."

Cloud's face quirked, "..Maybe there won't be that many.. promotions there?"

Sephiroth laughed and squeezed Cloud's hand affectionately.

He had made mention of his "truck" during their conversation this evening. Cloud had seen trucks in his life, many times. He could pick a truck out of a line up of vehicles. This was a fucking tank with wheels. Not a pretentious Hummer, either. A black tank.

Sephiroth unlocked the passenger side door, opened it slightly, then walked around to the driver side.

Cloud climbed up into the vehicle. Literally. He had to grab the edge of the passenger seat and pull himself up and in. On the inside, it actually did kind of look like a truck.

"Buckle up."

Cloud always did anyways, but the way in which it was advised was downright ominous. Sephiroth turned the tank on, immediately threw it into reverse, jerked it into drive, and they were off.

Cloud, due to his relative inexperience, coupled with the fact that he always had his mother in the car, was a defensive driver. As in, he stayed inside the lane. He honked the horn only in emergency situations. He slowed down at yellow and even stopped at red.

As for Sephiroth, quite the opposite. It wasn't exactly that he was racing the other drivers, it was more like he was lining them all up to be slapped in the face with his dick, consecutively. He was a lawless beast.

He didn't even use his turn signals!

Cloud would have been completely terrified, if it were not for the fact that while Sephiroth was busy being a road warrior, he was completely relaxed back into his seat, using only the heel of his hand to guide the steering wheel. Something about that made Cloud feel protected, safe, maybe not so much on death's door.

Lo and behold they came upon a dreaded red light, the solidness of the cars waiting in every lane preventing them from running it. Sephiroth stopped, bitching lightly under his breath as if it were some sort of personal offense. Then, he stretched out his arm and laid his hand on the back of Cloud's headrest.

They both looked at each other. Cloud smiled. Sephiroth smirked.

And something extremely suggestive happened between their eyes.

Maybe it was the way Sephiroth's eyebrow lifted. Maybe it was the way Cloud unconsciously licked his lips. Maybe it was the way Sephiroth's eyes were glowing in the near dark, radiating the color of lust. Maybe it was the way Cloud slowly reached up to tuck a stray lock of blonde behind his ear.

Green light.

When the unusual vehicle came to a thumping halt on the darker side of the school parking lot, the only sounds were the clicking release of seatbelts before they met in the middle of the cabin.

There was a timeless span of their mouths folding and unfolding, of licking and sucking at skin, of panting, of hair being mussed, of lips taking a break to let tongues and hands do all the work. It was all so new, so tasty, and so needed.

Cloud couldn't help but curiously peeked down at Sephiroth's crotch, groaning a little at both the sight of the erection tenting his zipper and the feel of grating teeth and soft lips against his throat. It wasn't until then that he began aching in his jeans. Cloud was shocked. His release earlier had been the most fantastical of his life, he thought he'd surely be sated for at least a day or two.

That's not how sex works, though.

He was officially dying to grip Sephiroth again. And what a fool he had been for being too severely nervous to give that big thing the attention it so deserved! But even now.. Cloud was still a bit too shy to just reach down and make a grab at it. So he instead made a move to crawl up over the stick shift to be in Sephiroth's lap again, close to that hard, heated core of him.

"BRWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA – !!"

But in the attempt, he sat right down on the horn.

The monstrous sound jerked them both harshly back into reality. 

After laughing to burn the edge off of their jarred nerves, Sephiroth kissed Cloud solidly on the mouth, "You better go. It's after 9."

Cloud turned up his eyebrows, but nodded. He climbed back into his seat and touched the door handle.

Before exiting, he pressed his lips to Sephiroth's ear, "Goodbye."

People don't normally say 'goodbye'. They say 'bye', or 'see ya' or 'later' or if they were feeling snobbish, 'farewell'. Sephiroth mildly wondered if anyone had ever said goodbye to him in his entire life. And even if they had, there's no way it could have sounded as sweet. Every single letter was pronounced in that lilting little accent. Goodbye.

Cloud slid down and out, and closed the door behind him. He passed in front of the headlights, slowly walking in the direction of the Rufus building. He turned a little to give the tank one last gaze.

What he found made a curiosity explode onto his face.

Sephiroth had the window rolled down, arms crossed, and was resting his chin on them. The smile on that handsome face was …

"Forget something?" …positively demonic.

Cloud blinked in confusion, then realized that there was a familiar weight absent from around his neck. He stepped up to Sephiroth's door, and heard the unmistakable sound of automatic locks.

"Seph?"

On tiptoes through the open window, Cloud watched Sephiroth reached down and grab up his bag from the passenger side floor.

There was the deliberate rip of Velcro.

"I never got around to that random inspection."

Cloud's blood pumped ice cold, OH, FUCK.

But he tried his best to sound blasé, "It's late, give it."

"Hmm.." Sephiroth chimed, "Mp3 player. Not needed for class."

The blonde felt what could only have been hives break out on his chest, "Seph.."

"Holy shit.." Sephiroth said lowly, making Cloud almost faint, "..your ID is cute!"

"Seeph! Stop!"

"Are you ordering me around, Strife?" Sephiroth asked coolly, the tip of his tongue poking out while he continued to rummage.

Cloud grimaced, Sephiroth was getting warmer and warmer to the goods, "No sir. I just.. I have some.. very personal items in there!"

"Too personal to tell your dear about?" He was now flipping through one of Cloud's school notebooks, "..Aww.. you doodle."

He took a stab at an irresistible pout, "Seph, you're being mean.."

"Baby, I'm a bastard."

Cloud growled and reached through the window to make a grab for the bag, but it was too high, and his long fingers only wiggled and sprawled uselessly.

Then they went still as Sephiroth pulled a large tube from the bag.

"..Hair gel?" Then, white eyebrows popped up, "..whoah.."

Cloud could take no more. He made a dive through the window.

He half crawled, and was half pulled through the small opening. Sephiroth let him grab the lube tube and his effects, and scuttle across his lap and onto the passenger seat. He shoved the offensive item back in his bag in huffy prudishness.

Sephiroth blinked, his face surprisingly neutral before a smile slithered into the corners of his mouth, "..And to think I thought those spikes were natural."

Cloud roared, "That wasn't hair gel!"

Sephiroth sounded surprised, "Oh, so it is natural!" Then his arm wrapped around Cloud's stiff shoulders and pulled him close, "..You're cute. You know that?"

Cloud relaxed and leaned against him in defeat, scrunching his nose a little, "..I guess I don't have a reason to hide it."

"Don't hide anything. Besides, I'm glad that.." Sephiroth was still extremely aroused, especially after that little discovery, and his brain went off on a tangent conjuring terrible, disgusting, perverted ways to finish off that sentence.

But his mouth went with, "…you want that. Too."

It came out as awkward as one might imagine.

But Cloud kept leaning on him, a smile gracing his lips. He seemed to be drinking in that awkwardness, as opposed to slapping Sephiroth in the mouth, which he felt was quite deserved. How was he supposed to know there would be sex equipment in Cloud's purse?

Cloud sighed quietly, "This is real, right? Just tell me if this is real."

"I think it is."

Cloud relaxed more fully into the hard, but comfortable pillow of Sephiroth's shoulder.

"So.. is this a secret?"

"I've never been good at keepin' 'em."

Cloud smiled at that.

And Sephiroth smiled at the pure naivety. Cloud didn't yet understand the impossibility of anything in Sephiroth's life remaining a secret.

He also didn't yet understand that their little make out romp was currently being either fussed over, laughed over, or vomited over, depending on who was in that helicopter lurking in the distance.

But those realities weren't important at this moment. They just didn't belong in it. Cloud said he liked him, and there was truth in that. And he liked Cloud. Why muddy that with bullshit so soon?

Sephiroth felt the weight of Cloud's head on his shoulder, his narrow shoulders pressed into his side. Cloud felt the warm, heavy sharpness of Sephiroth's chin resting on his head.

And when he could not stay for a single minute longer, Cloud ran like the wind back to his room. 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sephiroth was barely 17 years old when he graduated the academy, and immediately received his first promotion to Sergeant.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why!?"

"Wait for it.. because I said so! That's what dads are supposed to say, right?"

Sephiroth growled, "Please. Don't treat me like I'm stupid."

"I'd say you're acting pretty stupid, kiddo."

"It's not stupid! You are my dad!"

They both simultaneously winced against the sun as Sephiroth followed Vincent Valentine outside. He squinted over at the white headed teenager, who in response flashed one of those huge, charming salesman smiles that only he could conjure. Despite himself, Vincent had to grin back, but then wished he hadn't when genuine hope sparked in Sephiroth's eyes.

"Listen to yourself. How could that be possible?"

"You had unprotected intercourse with my mother roughly around the time of my conception." Sephiroth stated clinically.

"Oh, pleeease! What are you even talking about? We're talking about nothing. You don't even look like me.. We are talking about nothing!"

Vincent dropped down into the driver's seat, and gave a long suffering groan as Sephiroth hung childishly on the open car door, "I won't bother you, Vin, I promise. I have my own money. I'll buy all my own food and I'll keep everything clean. I swear! And I won't ever have friends or girls over when you're not home. Did you know I can cook?"

"Off."

Sephiroth released the door and it slammed shut. Vincent rolled down the window.

"..Why not?"

"Seph, I don't know what the hell you've gotten yourself convinced of, or how. But I am not your father."

"Bullshit." Sephiroth drawled slowly and deliberately.

"Watch your mouth."

Both men glared at each other through the window.

"There's a chance."

The engine rumbled to life.

"No. There's not." And in the way that he taught Sephiroth last summer, he threw the car into reverse, and squealed out of sight.

Sephiroth stood in the empty parking space, wearing the SOLDIER uniform he had worked so hard to earn.

Openly denied.

In full SOLDIER garb, in broad daylight, Sephiroth cried. 

He didn't bawl or blubber or whine or whimper. Silent tears ran out of his eyes to pool and drip off his lips and jawline. He sniffed twice, wiped it all away, and was done.

He had waited for this day. He had proved himself. And to be promoted already? Sephiroth had thought that there wouldn't be a chance that Vincent wouldn't want him.

He was hoping that even if he didn't completely buy the sleuthy conclusions Sephiroth had come to about him possibly being his father.. maybe he might want to let him stay at his place anyways. Maybe just out of love. And if Vincent didn't love him, maybe he would have thought he was a swell enough young man to rescue from the mouth of hell anyways.

He obviously didn't.

But Sephiroth still loved Vincent Valentine terribly.

He forced himself to swallow the truth : nobody ever would come for him. No father, no mother, no handsome prince. The thought about the handsome prince passed so fleetingly and so under the radar of the angry noise in his mind, that the 17 year old paid no attention to it.

He then began to do something he would later become famous for : strategize.

First, he walked to the nearest car dealership. They specialized in refurbished military vehicles. He bought a truck. Just fucking bought it.

Then, he drove to the Midgar Municipal Court, and requested an application for emancipation.

When he handed it over to his legal guardian to be signed, he was met with bitter laughter, "Where do you think you're going to go?"

"Wherever I want."

"You belong to me."

Sephiroth had heard this all his life, and could never think of a snappy response. But now he knew damn fucking well what to say, and could not contain the acid pleasure of declaring :

"I belong to Vincent Valentine."

That was all that needed to be said. That night was Sergeant Sephiroth's last night in the lab.

General Sephiroth wasn't a liar. But he was a big time omitter, especially where people he gave a damn about were concerned.

He had implied to Cloud that he lived in the Turk Building. His exact phrasing was that he was 'always in' there. And he was.. when he was allowed to hang out with his friends after school. 

But he never lived on campus. He lived in the Shin-Ra Building. It was a windowless room that fit a bed, and a closet big enough for his uniforms and boots. There was nothing wrong with the room, it was just that..

"It doesn't accommodate my wingspan." Sephiroth declared logically to Hojo when he was 14.

Hojo had taken the boy seriously by the shoulders, "What? What did you just say? What do you mean?"

Then, Sephiroth had stretched out his arms and flapped them, bumping the tips of his fingers on the two opposite walls with a chuckle, quite proud of his newly acquired lankiness.

In truth, the size of his room was dead last on his list of reasons for leaving the lab.

But the last thing Sephiroth wanted was pity, then and now.

With the emancipation application inked by Hojo, Sergeant Sephiroth, using what little power he had with his new rank and his connection to Shin-Ra, did everything he could do to push the request through to completion, that day. He fetched coffee for one judge, threw around a football with another who was a fat ex-jock and curious about SOLDIER abilities, listened politely and faked vapid interest while one rattled on about his children for eternity, and even knocked on the bathroom stall door of the last required signature.

Then and now, Sephiroth could be very charming when he wanted to be.

The final, female judge slid the application back under the stall, signed, and it was done.

Sephiroth was his own man.

He quickly loaded up the few things he owned into his truck. The news of his abrupt departure from being the lab resident spread around quickly.

To his complete surprise, as he carried out the final box, there was a large group of people in the hallway. They were researchers, scientists, nurses, doctors, techs, and caretakers. But, just for that moment, they were aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas and grandpas. And every one of them touched him and wished him well.

Nurse Rhonda, upon her hug, gave him a handy little print out of local apartment complexes. None were owned or run by Shin-Ra, a fact that made a piece of Sephiroth fall in love with her.

So, he visited each complex on the list one by one. Some were just plain below his price range, too small. Some were okay .. but not what he was looking for. Some were extremely large and inviting .. but a little above his price range. 

As the sun began to set and having not found a home, Sephiroth laid his forehead against the steering wheel. The 17 year old sniffled a bit, then smacked himself hard enough across the cheek to make his own ears buzz.

There were more important things to do than fuckin' cry.

It had to be that day. He just knew he had to find somewhere that day. If he didn't, he had a dreadful premonition that all this would be for nothing. He would end up back in the lab, back in that room, and back in..

No. He wiped his face as the light turned green, and drove. He started looking for a motel to sleep for awhile and think.

But instead, something caught his eye.

The complex itself was rather run-down. But up on the top floor, the architecture was different than the rest of the building. Older. There were 5 large windows, 8 panes of glass in each, all lined up closely together.

Even though it was after dark, he knocked on the managers office and asked if the apartment that featured those windows was available.

"It's the attic." The woman drawled, clearly annoyed.

Sephiroth asked to see it. He had enough tenacity to knock on a court judges bathroom stall, he would not be thwarted by an irritable landlord. He flirted, begged, vied for sympathy, and even got a little demanding. At last they walked up the stairs to the only door in a long hallway, and into the attic.

It was a massive, sprawling room. There was a boiler. There were cobwebs. Bricks, rotting planks, debris, boxes that looked like they had been there for hundreds of years.

A fat cockroach crept over his sneaker when he asked, "How much?"

"What are you? Nuts?"

"I'll pay whatever you want. I need it."

So, the woman charged Sephiroth the going rate for one of the complex's condos. If she was dealing with a crazy boy, she might as well get some dough out of the deal.

Sephiroth made two trips to lug up his possessions. He laid his mattress on the floor in front of the windows, and watched the green glow of Midgar, the city the same color as his eyes. Every so often, the reactors' smokestacks would speak.

And save for a few rodents, Sephiroth was completely, utterly, luxuriously alone.

He felt the obvious urge to masturbate. He had never had the luxury of doing it in bed before. Something about a camera with a blinking red light aimed at him at all hours was a turn off. And knowing that even if he always couldn't see it, that it was always there was an even bigger turn off. So he only did that sort of thing silently in the shower stalls at school, never even feeling totally alone in the bathrooms in the Shinra building (which he had come to find as an adult, were not to be trusted at all).

But in the darkness of his new home, Sergeant Sephiroth fucked himself. Good.

The next day, he made quick work of the mess. Being the fit and endlessly energetic young man he was, he bagged up the debris, carried down the wood and stacked it neatly next to the dumpster, laid down mouse traps, ate every roach he came across to discourage more from coming, went through the boxes and threw out everything he didn't find useful, and even went out and bought a mini-fridge. He was delighted to find, within all the dank clutter, a hideously filthy, but functional bathroom. He scrubbed it spick and span. He even managed to use the last bit of daylight to wash the windows.

At night, once again, he laid in bed in the dark and let the green light of the city fill the place.

A mattress and a minifridge. Sephiroth was quite content to live out his life just like that, until he heard the call of duty for the first time, after enjoying only 2 months in his home.

He told the landlady that he would be gone for an indefinite amount of time, and asked her to not disturb or sell his attic. She looked at him as though he were absolutely insane. But she consented to his leave, and wished for his safety.

He returned a year and a half older.

He wore a deep grimace when he opened up the door to his home, almost pained to see what he would find. But to his surprise, it was quite dusty, but still in the spotless way he left it. His mattress was still neatly made in front of the window. The minifridge was still unplugged against the far wall. There was still shampoo in the bathroom. The roaches were still too freaked out to come back.

During the listless days of war, there were delivered to his camp several MSO donated boxes of entertainment. Most of it was hardcore pornography, but in the bottom of one of the crates were several back issues of Modern Homes magazine. Sephiroth found that he had quite an interest in interior decorating and design. Although he would never fucking even utter the words 'interior decorating' or 'design'.

But he gathered an image in his mind of what he wanted to do with his undeveloped urban space.. Er – attic.

So he began to renovate, little by little.

He didn't do any of the actual work himself, he didn't have time to perform the tasks, nor the time to learn how, so he hired it all out. It was always fun to come home at night with a new room started, or the kitchen done, or the new hardwood floor laid, or another bathroom. Where he really got involved was with the colors and textures and lighting. He wanted to keep the attic feel of the place, because that's what made it home. So the red brick walls were left unplastered, the piping of the hot water heater snaking along the walls in each room, the big windows were left uncovered in the place where he slept.

He made the place exactly what he wanted it to be. It was still sprawling and open in places, functional and practical in others. He felt extremely uncomfortable answering questions about the place, as almost every inch was terribly personal. So, "I found it at the store" became his canned response to any and all queries about his home. Where did you find a black faucet? Why is there a room dedicated to throwing paint on the walls? Why are there paper lanterns in your office? Why a lipstick red couch? Why is there a mannequin in your guest bathroom?

"I dunno. I found it at the store."

The landlady, curious after all the work was finished, knocked on his door one evening to see what her crazy little tenant had made of the place. She looked at the now posh residence in complete awe. The attic was now worth at least five times what he paid for it. She asked if he wouldn't mind giving her advice for the rest of the complex. He inwardly sighed, wondering where he would find the time to moonlight as an interior decorator, but he felt such a strange and powerful satisfaction from it, that he agreed.

Crosswaves was suddenly the hippest place to live on the plate. Downtown coolness with the upper plate cost, the sons and daughters of executives ate it up. Sephiroth felt the pride of creative success, but took his retirement from the design business in favor of becoming the General.

General Sephiroth eased down into bed nude, too lazy to put on sleep bottoms, and more than ready for sleep. His nose could still smell Cloud, and what they had done here, the images fresh and vivid in his mind.

He rolled over onto his back. He didn't feel any regret about that. But he felt bitter remorse for accusing Cloud of aiming to use him. When Cloud denied it there was truth in his voice, so at least he himself believed that those weren't his goals. And even if he did turn out to not be genuine in what he wanted, at least that fact would reveal itself quickly, before Sephiroth ..

Ping! That was the sound of Sephiroth's heart realizing that it was too late.

He closed his eyes, but not before something caught his attention in the greenness of his room. On his bed were a few stray strands of blonde. Sephiroth picked one of the hairs up. It was golden yellow from root to tip, and stood completely vertical between his fingers. 

Nope. Definitely not hair gel, Sephiroth thought to himself with a smile.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud frowned, and went up and down the aisles again.

So many books. How could it be possible for all of them to suck?

He had to pick one for a report in Literature, and his hall pass was about to expire in 5 minutes. His eyes combed through the 'A's again, reasoning that since 'A' was the first letter of the alphabet, something especially good should be there.

Absence in the Palm of My Hands. Across the World. Alabaster God. All Our Yesterdays.

Fuck the letter 'A'! Cloud through bitterly, hooking it to the next aisle, which began with the letter 'O'.

Objects of Attraction. Obsession. Only the Lonely. Over the Rainbow.

Cloud paced bitterly. It had only been less than 24 hours, and already he was checking the clocks constantly, hoping that a day or two might have passed while he hadn't been paying attention. An hour, a minute! Every second he was longing for Sephiroth. 

Last night, upon arrival at their room, Cloud had found Cam already asleep. Finding that he was rather exhausted himself, he peeled off his second date ensemble and crawled into bed. The next morning, as per usual, he put on his fatigues and reported to the field with no shower.

He hadn't looked in a mirror, either.

When he finally emerged from the locker shower to fix his hair, he was met with a rather humiliating surprise. Cam hadn't mentioned it, because he figured it was something someone would know about themselves. None of the other guys mentioned it, either, for obvious enough reasons. The only thing amiss this morning was that Coach Van Sise had been calling him 'lover boy', and he had no clue as to why.

Cloud was covered in hickeys.

He had hickeys. On top of his hickeys. On top of his love bites. They were mostly on the left side of his neck, but also extended out to his throat and .. the back of his neck. He didn't even remember Sephiroth kissing the back of his neck! And what an odd thing to do. It had to have been done with a purpose..

Cloud had wrapped his fingers around his neck and shivered.

Sephiroth put a collar on him.

He had heard of it before. Marking your lover. How primitive! How naughty! How tremendous! And the only person that had shown any sort of interest in Cloud had been completely and positively deflected. Skylar hadn't talked to him all morning. He knew what the fuck was up.

But to the rest of the world, Cloud looked like a Honeybee the morning after a full moon.

So, he had his collar popped this day. It didn't do much to conceal the bites on his throat, but at least he had made an effort to be decent. But ever since his shower, Cloud couldn't even begin to try getting Sephiroth out of his brain, remembering the sucks and kisses and nibbles vividly.

As for their performance on getting Cloud out of the building, Cam handled the rumors with style and flair, telling everyone something different. To some, he told that Sephiroth interrogated Cloud about Cam's fight on Halloween, perfectly believable. He then told a few people that Psycho took a shit on Sephiroth's boot, and that Cloud valiantly took the blame, and so he had to be punished as if he himself had taken a shit on the boot, and that the incident would sully his record for the rest of his career. To one annoying fat kid, he told that Cloud was hooked on smack, and that Sephiroth found a peanut butter jar full of it under his bed. To others, he told that Sephiroth took Cloud to be disciplined for having too many pairs of shoes. To the busiest of the busy bodies, he told the bald faced truth : Sephiroth was dating Cloud. So many rumors swirled, that 99 of the populace didn't believe that Sephiroth was even in the Rufus building yesterday.

So that situation was dealt with. But he wondered how everyone would react if they really knew the truth.

Cloud shook his head, I need to find a fucking book, not think about this crap.

And he suddenly had an idea.

He tip toed over to the biography section, a huge, shit eating grin plastered across his face. He found what he was looking for almost immediately. And bonus! There were two books to choose from.

General Sephiroth : Achievements of a Hero, and Unbreakable : The Life and Times of General Sephiroth.

Life and times? The man was only 22. Well, 25 if you believed the bullshit that the newspapers print. But.. it made it sound like Seph was already ..

The notion was too heart breaking to dwell upon.

Cloud flipped through the Unbreakable one, because it was thinner, newer and had more pictures. On the very first page was a picture of Sephiroth's inauguration. Knowing a bit more about the man personally, it was quite obvious that he was holding back a massive smile. And then a photo he remembered seeing in the newspaper, Seph shirtless in Wutai. He's gotten even more ripped since then.. Cloud thought dreamily.

There were other pictures, some of him sitting at fancy looking banquet tables, one of him looking downright pissed off, one of him laughing. There was an explosion of delight on Cloud's face as he noticed a picture of Zack standing next to Sephiroth, both with their hands behind their backs, both looking very handsome and militant in identical SOLDIER uniforms.

Wicked thoughts ensued. Involving the words 'double' and 'teamed'. 

Cloud sighed wistfully. Can't have everything in life.

He read, 'It's easy for one to view the General Sephiroth as simply a young man, as a photogenic new blood force in the Shin-Ra army. However, as he has made it clear with both his command ability and defense stratagems betraying a revolutionary genius, he is a man deserving of his title.'

Blah, blah, blah.

Cloud let the pages flip by, and stopped at a large photo of Sephiroth looking up from a map on a table. It was sort of a close up. It appeared to Cloud that he was caught off guard, and about to bitch the cameraman out. The caption read: 

'When one attempts to meet the eyes of a true warrior, a respect is born not of obligation, but of necessity.' 

Cloud looked into the photo. Did he see a warrior? Yes. He certainly did. Did it scare him? Maybe. But he seemed to feel the polar opposite of what this pompous biographer seemed to have felt from those sexpot eyes. Powerful and confident.. but also very kind and open. 

He turned the page, and made a noise of delight. Surprise! It was Sephiroth! But.. smaller, skinner, hair brushing his shoulders, and rocking the academy uniform. The tie looked delicious. And his face actually had some roundness to it. Cloud read the little caption; Sephiroth's identification badge photo, third year student, fourth class SOLDIER, age 18. Cloud scoffed. He knew that he himself looked a little young for his age due to vertical issues, but in no universe did Sephiroth look 18 years old in this picture. Sephiroth was 15 in this photo. A year younger than he was. 

Then Cloud's brain exploded into a big budget day dream.

If only they were attending the academy together! If only Cloud could sneak in the Turk Building windows at night. If only they could arrange for a daily, torrid rendezvous in the locker showers. Or, behind the cafeteria, up against the wall climb, hidden in the darker corners of the library..

Oh, GOD! If only they could have been roommates!

"We'd fuck each other ragged. Habitually." Cloud confessed to the younger, softer version of his beloved.

The 15 year old boy in the photo whimpered, Please be gentle, Cloud. I'm a late bloomer.

Cloud suddenly looked at the clock. His pass had been expired for almost twenty minutes. He replaced the biographies, as biased and uninformed as they were, and just looked for any fucking book, something to take his mind off of Sephiroth.

Something the exact opposite of Sephiroth.

Little Women. After checking it out, he flitted out of the library and back to class.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud crept quietly down the hallway, and peeked around the corner.

It was 9pm Midgarian Time, which meant it was 2pm Mountain Time.

Prime time for calling home, but also, prime time for choice individuals who lived in the Rufus Building to hog the telephone.

Cloud rounded the corner just as a figure appeared at the other end of the hall. 

It was Greg, sandy headed second year; loved to hog the phone to talk to his lesbian girlfriend.

Greg's right eye twitched twice before Cloud tossed his tie over his shoulder and made a break for it.

They both arrived at the telephone at exactly the same time, and de-evolved into a mass of elbows.

"I never get to use the phone!" Cloud shrieked.

"I told my girl I'd be calling tonight!" Greg ground his feet into the carpet and put all of his weight against Cloud in attempts to shove him aside.

"She's probably too busy eating out her mistress!" Cloud gritted, planting his feet and pushing back.

"Stop calling Donna a lesbian!"

"Face it! After she gets her dick sewn on, her name will be Don Ho!"

"Why don't you give her your dick, Cloud? You don't need it!!"

"No you didn't!" Cloud laughed, and in a move that always surprised everyone, he leap frogged up into the air and over Greg entirely, and crashed down onto the phone table. He clutched the receiver against his chest in victory and began smashing the buttons.

Greg growled, "Compromise! You get half an hour, then I get half an hour!"

Cloud frowned, then nodded in agreement, "Okay. But take a hike. Don't fucking stand around and breathe down my neck!"

"Fine with me! Who knows where your neck has been!"

Cloud smiled saucily, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Greg grimaced, then did an about face and walked out of sight. The phone call connected and began to ring.

It rang six times then went to the answering machine. Cloud's lower lip popped out, his mom should have been home around this time. Oh well.

"Congratulations. You've reached the Strifes. Leave a message." His own voice told him dryly.

Cloud snickered at the memory of leaving that recording. It had been quite the challenge, as he was 13 at the time and his vocal chords insisted on cracking and ruining the whole deal. "Thank you for calling the Strii-ife residence. Please leave your name and nuu-umber." "Dammit, Clow! Keep it short and sweet, for fuck's sake!" That recording dripping with sarcasm was the first one that came out uncracked, and his mother said that it captured his inner bastard so well that she'd never erase it.

The machine beeped and Cloud smiled.

"Oh, Mother. Long is the day without your melodic voice wafting into my skull. I've sent you this telephone call to keep you informed of the current events. As I only have a unsatisfactory amount of time, I shall leave a brief list of highlights. My excrement was a bit green in color this day. I am currently bench pressing 105 pounds. And I have traded hearts as well as saliva with the lovely, and ever so delicious General Sephiroth. Please forgive me for calling at an inopportune hour! Goodbye! Goodbye, Mother!"

Cloud snorted loudly and hung up. He'd be extremely surprised if she even listened long enough to get to the bit about Seph.

Then he sighed and pressed his lips to the back of the receiver. Seph. He still had almost half an hour.

What the hell? Give that man a call.

It rang enough times for him to become discouraged, before it picked up with a sound that made bright color shoot up into his cheeks. Sephiroth was panting heavily.

"He-llo?"

Cloud swallowed, "Hi. It's Cloud."

"Hey!" There's only an exclamation point on the end of that because Sephiroth put an effort into sounding enthusiastic, but it came out in more of a short, breathy huff. 

Hey to you too, big boy! Cloud's penis replied. Cloud adjusted his pants.

"What are you doing?"

"Running."

"..Why?"

Sephiroth made a noise that translated into, 'I dunno.'

"Well, I'm sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to say hello.. And that I'm thinking of you." He bravely finished.

"Thinking of me?" Sephiroth breathed sweetly.

Those breathy words and gasps were a bit too much to handle. Cloud adjusted again and smiled, "All day long."

"Cute. Hey. Hang on."

"Okay."

Sephiroth then let out a long groan, punctuated by a growl. Then, a heavy 'Oomph!'

"Back."

Cloud unscrunched his face, and although he wasn't sure he wanted to know, "What the hell just happened?"

"Turtle. This time of year the water starts gettin' cold and the turtles here move inland. Fuckin' everywhere. I just carried one off the track." Sephiroth continued to huff and puff. 

He just might be the most random man ever, Cloud thought to himself. He looked around. There was a newspaper on the table next to the phone. He picked it up and thumbed through, "..Hey! When's your birthday?"

"Please. I hate birthday parties."

Cloud hiked an eyebrow, "I didn't say anything about a birthday party. I just wanna know when it is."

"Why?"

"So I can brush up on my stripper moves." Cloud bit down on his fist after these words came tumbling out. His very first foray into outright perversion, surely Sephiroth would balk.

"May 21st. And I don't think you need to brush up on anything."

Cloud squealed loudly until he found what he was looking for, "You, my dear, are a Taurus."

"A what?"

"Your astrological sign is Taurus."

"Fuck that. It's bullshit, don't read it.. I thought we were talkin' about you strippin'…"

Cloud laughed and squealed again, "It's not bullshit! I'm a Leo. Lets see what my horoscope says for me today, since it's over and I'll know if it came true. Ahem.

"Expect delays in communication. Take time for yourself at the end of the day.

"See? It's totally true!"

"How is that true?"

"Delays in communication! I was trying to radio my partner in Basic Tactics, and the battery in my walkie talkie went dead. I had to run all the way back to class to get another one off the charger, and I barely made it back to complete the assignment in time. Ha! OH! And I tried to call my mom, and I got the answering machine! It's double fucking true! OH!! And I'm taking time for myself to talk to you. TRIPLE TRUE! This is amazing, isn't it?!"

"It's totally ambiguous. Read me mine."

Cloud smiled wickedly, "You'll get a call from your Nordic lover, expect to get distracted and trip over a turtle."

"Holy shit! Amaazing!" Sephiroth shouted raggedly.

Cloud snickered, "Okay okay.

"You've received the sign to act, and you have. But make sure to heed good advice.

"Does that make any sense to you?"

"No."

Cloud shrugged, "Oh, well."

"So, when is your birthday?"

"August 19th."

Sephiroth hummed, "Zack will be happy."

"Why?"

"No reason at all to party in August. I'll have to tell him."

Cloud flushed, "I thought you hated birthday parties!"

Sephiroth laughed, "My own. But Zack loves plannin' 'em, and I love cake."

"Ah! Don't tell him!"

"I'll be damned if he doesn't already know. He lives for that shit."

"Geez. SOLDIERs are such party animals."

Sephiroth made a noise of consideration, "Don't judge 'em too much. They've seen a lot, and they work hard. If they like to party, I say let 'em."

"You don't like to?"

"I let off my steam in other ways."

"..Like how?"

"Well, running is one way. And I have my bullshit fun. Movies, whatever.."

Cloud made a 'hmm' of understanding.

"..And of course lately, I've been wantin' to fuck the brains out of a Nordic boy."

Cloud squealed louder than possible, "CHRIST!!" 

The steady gasps of breath on the other end stopped and turned into pained guffaws, "You're.. so.. admit you.. fuckin' love it!"

Cloud huffed, "I never said I didn't!"

Sephiroth sighed, then the steady gasps of running returned, "I knew you were perverted."

"I'm not perverted! I'm in touch with my sexuality!"

"Thank God!"

Cloud chewed his spike, "We didn't do anything that .. bad, yet."

"Mrm! I doubt any of it will be bad at all, tripod."

Cloud's nose scrunched, "Tripod?"

Sephiroth laughed deeply, "That's what you are."

"Huh?"

He made a groan of exasperation, "Think about it."

Cloud pictured a tripod for a camera, "I don't get it."

"You'll figure it out."

"Help me!"

"I shouldn't have to! Just think about it!"

"Tell me what it means!"

"Think, dammit!"

Cloud furrowed his brow in concentration. Tripod.

"Seeeeph." He whined pathetically, "Please just tell me."

"Nope. You'll have to figure it out."

"Is it bad?"

"Oh, ho ho, not at all!"

Suddenly Cloud saw something at the end of the hallway that made him cringe. Greg was marching impatiently up to him.

"Dear, I have to go now."

"Aw. Well, give me a call some time if you think about lonely old me."

Cloud smiled, "I will."

"Donna's gonna be worried!" Greg pointed out for no reason.

Cloud closed his eyes and inhaled heavily over the receiver, hoping somehow the scent of his beloved would travel through the phone lines, "Bye."

"Bye, baby." And Sephiroth was gone.

Cloud handed over the receiver sadly.

"You seeing somebody, Cloud?" Greg asked conversationally as he dialed, no longer viewing the blonde as an enemy for phone usage.

Cloud nodded happily, then asked, "..Greg? What's a tripod?"

Greg's hazel eyes slowly flicked up and down Cloud, "..The.. stand for a camera."

Cloud's eyes narrowed, "What did you think just now!?"

"Hey, Donny!" Greg shouted merrily.

Chapter Image can be found here!

owmyhearteries dot deviantart dot com / art / Blonde-Ambition-ch-10-81782473

A/N

1- Sorry for the delay in getting this up. I had some emotional upheaval in my personal life. Heart transplant surgery by force, if you know what I mean. After drowning my sorrows at the hookah bar, and giving rendition after boisterous rendition of Love Today by Mika, I think I'll be just fine! I'm a free woman! Just.. life was hard these past two weeks. If you have good vibes to spare, send 'em down the line.

2- No citrus in this chapter. Hope you're not disappointed, but fear not! More are coming. Coooming! Uh oh, I am the witty one!

3- Dirge of Cerberus? Bitch, please. I didn't even get all the way through Final Fantasy SEVEN. I didn't want Cloud to fight Sephiroth, and that is a true story about my mental capacity. But, I've wept, cried, and spilled actual tears for Vincent Valentine. If you thought I was going to keep him locked in a box in the Blonde Ambition fagga-verse, you've got another thing coming. I just.. I really want the ff7 guys to be happy, I suppose. But I know they aren't them without their emo faults. Cloud's depression, Seph's genetic weirdness, Vin's heaping serving size of loneliness and guilt. But ..no coffin, Vin. GTFO of that thing.

4- I was thinking about Sephiroth, wondering what astrological sign best suited him. I think he's definitely a Taurus; stubborn, sweet hearted bull. But he also has a duel side to him, one of those people with a secret self … So his birthday is May 21st, the last day of Taurus, on the cusp of Gemini, the twins.

5- Cloud's birthday, according to canon, is August 19th. But some peeps say it might have been on the 11th. Either way the kid's a Leo; bratty catty lion. Suits him well.

6- Tripod? In the words of Angelica Pickles, 'If you have to ask, you'll never know!'


	11. Female Problems

Strutting alone through the smoggy streets of late afternoon downtown, Sephiroth smiled suddenly and brilliantly to himself at a memory. 

"Ohhh God, General Sephiroth.. I'd lick you head to toe.. even if you were a drizzle of corn-encrusted shit stuck to a gas station toilet handle...!" The purring voice over the phone had been barely able to finish through his tinkling laughter, the object of the game being to conjure up hideous compliments and say them as sexily as possible.

Sephiroth himself on his turn had taken several false starts, chuckling hard, but finally took a big breath and groaned lustfully, "Mmm, Cloud Strife, I'd fuck you all night long.. even if you were coated in chum and trapped four feet deep inside of President Shin-Ra's hairy asshole."

After a season of trip after numbingly dull business trip, it was all over. The much loathed "promotion season" was finished. It was only his third, but next year he was planning on totally passing the buck to someone else. Sephiroth preferred to be in Midgar, close to his favorite colleagues, close to Zack, close to his home. And he might be the General, but no twenty-year vet likes to be demoted by a twenty-something brat.

He sort of liked that, though. The way the old timers held out that last piece of respect for him, the new, extremely young General. He wanted everything, but never wanted to be just handed anything. It felt good to earn their respect; it meant something more to him than a trembling grunt's near-worship.

So, Sephiroth felt the relief of work completed. Now he had time to do what he truly enjoyed about his job : training with the dudes, and beating the shit out of any and all creatures that dare show their asses. He smiled, hoping for one last big motherfucker before the snow came.

But not tonight. He had made it very clear that he was not to be contacted, and that Zack should and would take care of anything that came up. Tonight, he didn't want to see, talk to, or deal with anybody.

But him.

A lot could be said for the slums, as far as Sephiroth was concerned. Downtown, nobody paid attention to anybody. If they had, they might take a second notice of the tall guy with the hat on. But they didn't, it just wasn't their way. And while he loved his job and would be lying if he said he didn't often enjoy the attention being one of the most recognizable military leaders brought.. sometimes it felt like bullshit. Trite.

No recognitions, no autographs, no curses, no drunks trying to get a cell phone picture arm wrestling him. He wasn't some sort of goddamn celebrity, he was an army General.

He wondered how it would be if he looked different. Older, plainer, buzzed military hair.

Don't be vain. You're goddamn disgusting in most people's eyes, he reminded himself with a sigh. And while it was true he got his fair share of admirers, he knew that his looks weren't exactly mainstream handsome. Often when he looked in the mirror, even he felt a teenage brand of self loathing.

Sephiroth slowed down his strut until he stopped, lingering over the selection of pretty plant life in the hand made wagon.

"The patch didn't work, I assume?" He hummed conversationally.

Aeris, upon realizing the identity of the tall stranger at her cart, let the cigarette fall from her lips, then promptly stomped it out.

"What do you mean?" She wheezed in a puff of smoke.

"I won't tell," He chuckled, beginning to make his selections, "..Slim pickin's."

"They're all unique and beautiful in their own way.." She whispered the last part, "My poinsettias and holly aren't ready to come outside yet."

Leave it to Aeris to defend stupid plants' feelings. Sephiroth focused on the arrangement he was beginning to create, and let silence spin itself out.

She couldn't stand it anymore, "What are you doing here?"

He smiled, "I have a hot date."

She crossed her arms brattily, "Why didn't you just go to a florist?"

He turned his bouquet to examine it, "Oh, but it would get back to you through the union that I bought flowers somewhere else. Then you'd actually have a reason to be so cunty."

She gasped, "Listen here! Just because you're a … whatever.. that doesn't mean you're allowed to use the c-word!"

"You're absolutely right," He smirked, "..faggots should never use cunts."

"You have no class!" Aeris hissed.

"Tell me about it. That's why I need flowers."

She crossed her arms but couldn't help but smile, "Smart aleck. Give me your money and go away!"

He showed her the finished product, "Good?"

She looked at it, then added a few more white ones. He paid her.

"I'm gonna be at your wedding." He declared suddenly, to which Aeris stifled a surprised gasp.

"Fuck. I'm gonna probably be in it." He continued mock-thoughtfully, as though he were complaining to her. She turned red as a beet.

"And I'm gonna have to be there when your kids are born." In response to this, Aeris turned slightly on her heel and let a giggle slip. He continued, "And I'm gonna be changing those fuckin' brats' diapers when mommy and daddy need alone time, I can feel it. Ugh, and when they're sick, and when they graduate, and on your golden fuckin' anniversary.

"I'm gonna be in your goddamn life until one of you finally croaks. After which Zack will be gone and we'll have no reason to put up with one another, or you'll be dead and I'll be dancin' on your grave."

At this, Aeris finally laughed.

"So, I gotta know, since we're stuck with each other.. Are you seriously mad at me because I broke up with your stupid friend?"

She uncrossed her arms, then crossed them again, "I'll be honest. I was at first. But then it became a.. habit."

He was unphased, "Completely understood. It's fun to have an enemy. Especially an asshole like me. "

Her female brain heard something sincere inside of that statement, and it melted her iciness in a way an outright apology would have most assuredly fail to, "I'm so touched, Sephiroth. Let's start over! Let's be friends!"

..Not that he would have apologized to her anyways, he hadn't done a goddamn thing. But if there was one difficult skill he had learned in his life, it was how to flatter, negotiate with, and neutralize an enemy.

And of course he realized that this rivalry bothered Zack quite a bit, and why shouldn't it? He wouldn't know how to act if Zack spit and cursed at the mere mention of Cloud… not to mention, seeing him and her sing together was a precious moment that made Sephiroth like her a little bit by default. Furthermore, every single florist he had stopped at closed at 5 on Fridays.

"Okay then, friend. If it won't spoil your relationship with Kristen, that is."

"Eh," Aeris shrugged, lighting up another cigarette, "I don't even talk to that c-word anymore."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Cam, would you make love to me?"

"Yeah." He mumbled, enthralled by the book he was reading.

"No, really."

"Yeah."

Cloud growled, "Stop reading Little Women for five goddamn seconds and tell me if you would really make love to me or not!"

"Eh. Dis is your department. I don't know nothin' 'bout.." Cam trailed off as his eyes focused on Cloud, who realizing he was finally be scrutinized, folded his hands in front of himself nervously.

"Well?"

"..What are ya wearin'?"

In a humiliated frenzy, Cloud's hands flew up to tear off his clothes.

"Hey! I never said it don't look good, I was just.. um.. it's.."

Cloud stopped undoing buttons and looked hopeful.

Cam tilted his head, "You's look like ya came out from a time warp."

He did. That was the ironic point.

It had been two weeks and five days since he last kissed Sephiroth. When he was told that he had to give a few more days instead of take, Cloud's lower lip had begun to tremble in Midgar. Thinking he had the veil of distance, he let a few tears slip silently down his cheeks.

"Don't cry." Sephiroth commanded sternly from Junon.

After all, he'd be stationed upon his return. Stationed! They could be together until they got sick and tired of each other. And the lucky news was that his return was on a Friday evening.

As Cloud was damn well aware, no curfew.

And it had been Sephiroth's idea to go out to dinner tonight. Dinner! Dinner with Sephiroth! And no curfew!? Cloud felt a little faint just thinking about it.

Skinny jeans and a band shirt simply wouldn't cut the mustard. He had to dress up a bit!

So, he had gone downtown after school in search of the perfect third date / possible lovemaking ensemble.

Thrifting in Nibelheim was a lesson in patience. After spending an afternoon swimming through piles of lederhosen and bulky flannel, maybe, just maybe he would come across a cool shirt. Or perhaps a wrinkled, bleached out pair of girl's jeans.

But in the palace-like thrift stores of Midgar, he found a pair of dark gray trousers with black pinstripes in just his size (way too tight), white suspenders, a pearl gray dress shirt and a short, black, button up vest. Coordinated! Retro! Snappy!

As for footwear, he was normally dead against buying thrift shoes because.. well.. ew. But he spotted the most remarkable pair of shiny, bowling ball blue loafers that he had ever laid eyes on. They were way too big, but he laced them tight and decided to clunk around in them for the sake of a cool outfit. The entire ensemble cost him 12 gil.

"So, I'm from a time warp. But am I good?"

Cam's mouth swished this way and that, "I'd tap ya hard if we was on a deserted island. That made people on it gay."

That was all Cloud needed to hear, and he said to Cam from the bathroom, "Let me just say that you should regret not coming with me today. One store had an entire section of your Satan worshipping heavy metal bullshit."

Cam groaned, "Ya know dere's fuckin' jizz and coke and kaka all over those clothes, right?"

"That's what makes it so special! You never know what you'll find when you reach into your pockets." A losing lottery ticket, in Cloud's case.

He only used hairspray when he wanted to let his hair get a bit out of control. It was obvious that the shit had a mind of its own, any and all attempts to tame it via products usually yielded unexpected and sometimes sexy results.

He took the chance and spritzed the largest vertical spike twice, than ran his flat iron upwards, slowly. 

In response, it fanned out. Cloud tilted and turned his head. Very cool. He flat ironed a bit more to not look so much like a palm leaf, then went about the one, final touch he had for this evening. The scariest touch.

His mother always wore makeup, usually black smeared around her eyes and on her lashes. It worked for her, complimenting her blonde hair, blue eyes and tattoos most hardcorely.

But she sometimes changed it up. On one specific occasion, for his Aunt June's fourth wedding, she did something different. Cloud was 9, and he remembered sitting on the toilet and watching her get ready. Using black liquid and a tiny, paintbrush-like applicator, she created a delicate line above her lashes that made her look like a total sex kitten. Cloud would catch his mother out of the corner of his eye at the reception, and every single time, it was a little bit breath taking. Despite the wear and tear from chain smoking, and having to grow up a bit too quickly due to Cloud, she was a beautiful woman. And he knew that he looked just like her.

He asked the makeup counter girl at the nearest upper plate drug store for help. He described the product his mother had used all those years ago.

"Liquid eyeliner?" She asked through bubble gum.

"That sounds right. Do they still make it?" A recommendation to use it with mascara, and 15 gil later, he had the stuff.

He decided to try the mascara first. After quickly swiping the caterpillar-like brush through his lashes, his eyes blinked involuntarily and rapidly. It tickled like fucking crazy! And the blinking had left little black blots under his eye, which he wiped away. He gave it another swipe, more carefully this time, then waved a towel at his eye so the shit might dry.

After he was confident he wouldn't ruin his face, he looked at himself and blinked. His lashes were already pretty dark, but there was a little bit of a difference. Just a little. He did the other side, then opened up the liquid eyeliner.

Always one to have fairly steady hands, he now kept them still as a surgeon. In the way the memory of his mom did, he made a pass over his eye, attempting to make it thicker near the outside corner. Without blinking or looking, he moved to the other side and repeated the process. 

After having both eyes done, Cloud regarded himself at length, and from every angle. He wasn't the first male on Earth to wear guyliner, straight or gay. He took a few steps back to get the whole picture. He could have been the hottest fifth member of Panic At The Disco, or perhaps a blonde, fashionable droog from Clockwork Orange. He turned around, hooking his thumbs through his suspenders, and winked at himself seductively. 

"Mr. General, care for a bit o' the old in-out-in-out?"

Cam's voice interrupted the already blossoming daydream, "Hey, uh, it's about that time, isn't it?"

Cloud began putting his things away in the bathroom, "Yeah, he should be here any minute!"

"Then I'ma go somewhere."

"You don't have to leave."

Cam was quiet. Cloud poked his head out of the bathroom, "Cam? You don't have to le-"

"I heardja. But I think I .. wanna leave."

Lucking into such a streetwise, open minded friend can spoil a person like Cloud. He blinked as an uncomfortable understanding passed between them.

"Okay.." Cloud said softly, then in an effort to ease the mood, "Don't wait up!"

Cam rolled his eyes, "I'll expect ya back in about five minutes."

They laughed, and Cam slammed the door with a leashed Psycho in tow.

Cloud finished cleaning up after himself, and was just about to sit on the bed to wait, when there were three sharp, telltale knocks.

He didn't even remember to smile or pose in his haste to remove any and all solid objects between himself and his beloved. He tore open the door, and took a pause at what he found.

Sephiroth did not immediately register as Sephiroth.

He was wearing his glasses. And his hair was entirely tucked up into the black cadet cap from his coffee table, except for a few short strands around his face. Cloud took a breathless notice of the length of his neck and the hard line of his jaw, his face appearing much, much younger without the edgy help of silver hair flanking it.

"Hey." Sephiroth said.

Cloud didn't speak. He took a few long steps back into the room, and reached out.

Sephiroth closed the door behind him as he walked into Cloud's outstretched arms. He buried his fingers and nose in Cloud's hair, feeling thin arms lock around his waist. 

They held each other for several long moments. Cloud breathed in like a drowning person come to the surface, far too involved in his own relief to notice that Sephiroth, in his own way, was doing the same.

"I missed you." Cloud confessed against Sephiroth's chest.

"I'm back." He answered into Cloud's hair, "..You smell so good."

Cloud chuckled and pressed his nose to Sephiroth's jacket, "You smell like cookies."

Sephiroth growled, and the low pitched vibration woke up every single nerve in Cloud's body. He unlocked his arms and slid them up around Sephiroth's neck, too short to do much but part his lips in invitation, or else climb the man like a tree. Sephiroth smiled as he bent to meet him, pressing his lips fully against Cloud's. 

There was very little preamble; the kiss plunged into passion immediately, almost uncontrollably. Sephiroth held Cloud up against him tightly, who clung like any good romance novel harlot.

When Cloud began groaning softly, Sephiroth found himself wondering which bed was his to use. Then he took a more aware notice that there were two beds. One belonged to some random kid that could walk in at any moment.

He didn't care less about his own embarrassment, he just didn't want anyone else seeing Cloud in this blushing, writhing, sexually charged context. Ever. Especially some kid who was sleeping next to him.

With that sobering thought, he retracted and stood up straight, smiling as Cloud clung and refused to let his lips go, sucking onto them until the bitter end.

"Geez." Sephiroth breathed as he was finally at his full height.

Cloud's humility found him, and his clinging became less urgent, "I'm sorry. I just.. need to kiss you."

That earned him another one, made of sweeter, softer, full mouth to mouth contact.

Cloud put his hands on Sephiroth's shoulders and let them feel and wander the bare skin on the back of his neck, a place he had not yet touched. Sephiroth was wearing smart black pants, a white (white!) v-neck cotton shirt with a soft, simple dark gray jacket that may have been considered a hoodie unzipped over it. It was all a little too smart and simple, and very well made. Cloud was suspicious. Sephiroth stuck to the most neutral of colors, but he was a fashionista at heart, he could feel it. He broke the kiss and moved it to Sephiroth's cheek, then neck, where unobstructed by hair, he carefully pulled back on his collar, trying to get a peek at the label.

His blue eyes turned into two blue, quivering circles. Marc by Marc Jacobs! Cloud and his grubby thrift store hands were sullying designer clothes!

Sephiroth squared his shoulders ticklishly, "Knock it off."

Cloud kissed Sephiroth's soft cheek in a guilty apology, "I told you. I'm a clothes hound."

Sephiroth then straightened up with a smile, "That you are." And Cloud swelled with pride as green eyes appreciated his third date ensemble.

And Cloud better appreciated his. With the fashionably understated outfit and cute hat, he looked like a male model from the witness protection program, "You too.. are you being incognito?"

Sephiroth pushed the glasses up his nose, "Just a little. I'll take it off when we leave."

"..Please do." At almost three weeks apart, they had had several phone conversations varying in length and flavor, and he had become much more skilled at in the arts of verbal flirting and teasing, especially since Sephiroth always ate it up.

But flirting in person? He did alright for himself the last time they were together, but he had been longing to give Sephiroth the sort of look that made skin grow hot without words or touches. Cloud desired him in every way, and he wanted him to know it. He deserved to know it. So he gazed up and tried his best at sending love and lust across the space between their eyes. 

Sephiroth smiled at the game, and gave some of his own, "..What are you hungry for?"

Oh, damn you, double entendre! It was too much, Cloud lost his cool as heat took over his face, and hid away in Sephiroth's jacket.

"Anything you are." He said into the material.

Sephiroth hugged him warmly, "How about we just drive until we see somethin' interesting?"

Cloud nodded happily, nervousness evaporating.

"Oh," Sephiroth said, picking up a bag that had been dropped on the floor when he was lured in from the hallway.

He held it out to Cloud, who eyed it curiously for a moment before slowly reaching out to take it. Sephiroth smiled and swung it out of reach, "Close your eyes. Don't open 'til I say."

A present? There was nothing Cloud liked better. He smiled, and shut his eyes obediently.

The room was utterly quiet for a moment. Cloud was about to become a bit anxious, when smooth, soft lips touched his. Cloud melted into the kiss, starving for it. He had noticed that he enjoyed kissing with his eyes open, liking to watch the shapes Sephiroth's full lips made against his. But he was resolute about keeping his eyes closed, thinking that perhaps this was a test. The effort made his eyelids tingle.

Sephiroth completed the kiss with a long flick of his tongue, then there was a rustle of the bag, "It made me think of you. Open."

Cloud smiled widely, wondering what could have made Sephiroth think of him, and he slowly, carefully slit one blue eye open. 

Sephiroth was holding up a small, baby blue t-shirt that declared, 'Nibelheim : A quaint little drinking town with a mountain problem.'

Cloud read the statement twice before growling with astonishment, "Oh my God! It kicks ass! Thank you, thank you!"

Sephiroth grinned at the enthusiasm, as he was a person who liked to give presents. Then, he was grinning for a different reason; Cloud had begun to hastily unbutton his clothes.

He took notice not only as a lover, but as a superior that Cloud had to have been working damn hard in his training. In only under three weeks, there was a slight visible difference in the contours of his long arms, and his waist appeared to be a bit more defined. The changes would probably taper off around spring, then pick up again next year as his body reached its final maturity. Sephiroth felt a wistful pang, having gone through it all himself not too long ago. It was exciting to get bigger, harder, stronger. He wanted Cloud to be stronger. He wanted him to be a SOLDIER.

Sephiroth kept these musings silent, but had to let out an appreciative whistle.

Cloud giggled, stretched the shirt carefully over his hair, and pulled it on.

"Yeah?" He asked, looking down at himself. The baby blue shade of the shirt echoed in the undertones of his eyes. Somehow Cloud made a kitschy little t-shirt gorgeous.

"Yeah." Sephiroth nodded.

"Vest?" Cloud asked.

"Nah. Suspenders."

Cloud nodded and pulled them back up from where they had been pushed down to rest on his hips.

When he finished fixing himself, Sephiroth said, "Close your eyes again."

Cloud looked a little bewildered at this, "More? Seph.." But shut them anyways.

This time Cloud knew what the gift was without opening his eyes, as his nose was filled with the smell of outside, and of surprisingly, home. He opened up without being told, and found an autumn-colored bouquet of flowers.

Cloud took them and smiled up at Sephiroth. He then looked bashfully back down to enjoy the bouquet's colors and textures, and to inhale the aroma.

To Sephiroth, Cloud never looked lovelier. With his dark lashes downcast and a small smile on his kiss swollen lips, he looked like an angel. Sephiroth inwardly sighed at the fact that his pretty memories of Cloud didn't do the beautiful reality justice.

Sephiroth parted his lips to wax poetic out loud when, to his utter astonishment, Cloud parted his lips, opened his mouth wide, and bit down on a cluster of the flowers.

He bared his little white teeth and ripped them off the stems, then chewed appreciatively.

"Mm!"

Sephiroth was immobilized, "..Did you just eat that?"

Cloud nodded innocently.

How about that? A cultural shock. In that quaint drinking town of Nibelheim, flowers are a common addition to sweeten salads. When given to one's dear, it's the equivalent of giving a box of candy. The more suggestive theme to the tradition implied that you gave them to your lover at the beginning of a date to "sweeten them up" for later consumption.

Cloud didn't even think to explain, and Sephiroth took it as a cue that the kid must be really, really hungry. After Cloud put the flowers down on his pillow, he grabbed his messenger bag, and they were out the door.

Sephiroth's arm slung heavily over Cloud's shoulder, keeping him closer than was casual, perfuming the Rufus building with the scent of Cloud's unavailability. Most people did give the odd couple an interested second glance, but never a third. The disguise had worked.

Once they were in the parking lot, Cloud remembered why he had been wearing long sleeves and a vest. It was goddamn nippy at nighttime now. He huddled closer to Sephiroth, who could easily see the goosebumps on Cloud's bare arms. He took off his jacket and offered it to him.

But.. Marc by Marc Jacobs .. Cloud shook his head, "I'm not worthy!"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes, and slung it over Cloud anyways. Feeling his beloved's body heat lingering in it, he zipped it up happily, and cuddled Sephiroth's arm, which was now covered in goosebumps.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Everything is pizza." Cloud observed while looking out the window. 

"Do you want pizza?"

"Noo." He said glumly. He had a feeling Sephiroth could always go for pizza.

"I ask you again; what are you hungry for?"

"I dunnoo." He sighed. He was starving, but just didn't know what for.

They had uncharacteristically stopped at a red light to examine the cuisine choices.

"I think I found our place, Leo."

Cloud looked over, used to the nickname as he had read their horoscopes every time they talked. Although, Sephiroth still had yet to explain the other puzzling nickname. On the corner on Sephiroth's side there was a restaurant called Psychic Food, with a big, glowing neon eye. 

"Psychic Food?" Cloud laughed, "Let's try it!"

They parked nearby, and with Sephiroth's mane untwisted from under the cap and spectacle-free, they entered the establishment. It looked fairly normal inside, except for a kitschy star motif on the walls and upholstery. There were a few tables with couples eating, a few tables of loners, and one big table of a babbling family near the back.

"Sit wherever you feel most centered." Said the woman behind the counter.

Cloud and Sephiroth looked at each other with strange smiles, then around.

They gravitated towards a booth. Cloud was glad they chose this seat, because it was right next to a window, and he loved the way Sephiroth's hair turned the colors of the sunset. Sephiroth was happy with this seat because it was a booth, and he could stretch out and throw his feet up on either side of Cloud.

Cloud smiled and rested his hands on Sephiroth's shins.

A glass of lemonade was set in front of Cloud, and a large mug that better qualified as a bowl was set in front of Sephiroth, which the waitress had filled with steaming coffee.

They hadn't asked for these beverages, but neither could complain.

"Your order will be ready in about 20 minutes." She said.

"We didn't order anything yet." Sephiroth couldn't help but point out.

The woman leveled him a look few would dare to, "You want an omelet. Inside, you want the ingredients for a pepperoni pizza, including the crust. I'm going to put powered sugar, and maple syrup on top."

Sephiroth gave a thinly veiled look of bewilderment, "Sounds.. good?"

"It will be. And you. You want a grilled cheese sandwich, extra pickles. Actually, you want pickles, cheese, pickles, cheese, then pickles, in that order. So it'll be more of a pickle sandwich with cheese on it."

Cloud spoke up, "I don't like pickles, ma'am."

"You've never had them because your mother doesn't like them. But you want them. I'm going to drizzle hot sauce and vinegar on it. And on the side .." she gave a long 'hmm', "Applesauce and cinnamon."

Cloud shrugged. And the waitress left.

"There's still time to bolt." Sephiroth said quietly, "We haven't taken a drink yet."

Cloud leaned forward, "If she's psychic, she knows we're going to bolt."

"True. Well, if we hate it, we'll go somewhere else."

Cloud smiled at his beloved, "If we hate it, wanna get something at a grocery and cook it at your place?"

Sephiroth gave a lengthy, prudish sigh as he began to fix his coffee, "I doubt we'd ever get around to eating.."

Cloud giggled at the flirt, then looked out the window. They were still on the plate, but close enough to the edge that he could see downtown. He truly loved this city. He truly loved Sephiroth.

He wondered when the appropriate time to say 'I love you' was. He would have said it already, but they had been confined to a phone, and he wanted to see Sephiroth when he offered that confession. Now didn't feel like the right time, not in the middle of some strange restaurant.

But he wanted to say it to him badly. And to hear it. Maybe he should wait for him to say it first? It was still quite new though.. maybe Sephiroth would think him immature for rushing into such a statement..

"Sephiroth!"

"Seph! We saw you through the window!"

They looked to find two ladies approaching them, one of them a short haired pale blonde, one of them an extremely pregnant brunette.

Sephiroth grimaced, "Shit! I can't fuckin' go anywhere without you two sluts showin' up!"

"Where have you been hiding?" The blonde said while squeezing his throat.

"You never call!" Preggers accused with a jerk of his hair.

"Why are you so hard to find?" The blonde asked while slapping his arm.

"When do the annual passes expire for the Golden Saucer, guys!? We need to go again before the end of the year!" Preggers cawed with a hug.

He stood to better receive hugs and abuse from the girls, "I've been busy. I don't have the luxury of knocked-up leave." This earned him more rough handling, "And I dunno why the fuck you're not at work anymore."

The blonde put her hands on her hips, "I am working. Julie needs escorting in her condition."

"Gimme a breeeeeak!" Sephiroth groaned with a deep laugh, then abruptly stopped and looked at Cloud, who was watching their exchanges with friendly interest.

The girls peered at him from around Sephiroth.

"Julie, Elena.. this is Cloud."

"Hi." Julie said.

"Hey." The blonde, Elena said.

Cloud wasn't exactly sure what to do, so he scooted off the seat and stood to wave at the girls, "Hello."

Julie did something unexpected – she suddenly started to bawl, "Oh! Come here!" She grabbed Cloud to hug him, who had never felt a pregnant stomach before in his life and treated it much like he would a girl's breast. He sucked in his stomach as much as he could to minimize contact, and leaned over it to return the embrace.

Elena wasn't pregnant, so she felt no desire to either cry or hug Cloud, and simply offered a smile.

Cloud looked up at Sephiroth, who was actually looking a little embarrassed, "Hey Julie, Cloud is in Rhonda's class. Fuckin' crazy, huh?"

Julie looked at Cloud with warmth, "You poor thing."

Cloud blushed a little, because he remembered why the name Julie sounded so familiar. Nurse Rhonda's life partner! "She's cool! Um, on Thursday she brought us cookies!"

Julie clapped her hands in delight, "I made those cookies! Did you like?"

"They were great! Well, we all threw them up..but they were worth it!"

"What a compliment," Julie said mock-dryly, then gasped and stood straighter, "Oh! I think I may need to use the little girl's room."

Elena scolded her, "Let's try to be careful. Last time you almost tripped, remember?"

Sephiroth looked concerned, "Do you need help?"

"No! Don't be silly." Julie said, and Elena took her arm. They looked so very weak and pitiable.

Cloud stepped forward, "I'll help. Let me?"

The girls both looked embarrassed and miserable, but they agreed with their eyes that they so very much needed a man to aid them.

Cloud held an arm out to Julie, who took it, and the three of them made their way to the ladies' room. Julie shuffled carefully, hunched slightly. Cloud gently let her go to hold the door open while Elena helped her through it.

There was nothing magical about a girl's restroom. Three stalls, three sinks. No piss on the floor was the main difference. Cloud let the door close, then turned to the girls, "I'll stand outside, okay?"

But somehow Elena was at his other side, and dead bolted the main entry.

"Gag him." She said.

Cloud scrunched his eyebrows, not understanding what had been said, when he felt something large force its way into his mouth. Quick fingers buckled the back of his head, and a shocked glance into the mirror told him that it was that Julie had somehow produced a ..black ball gag?

He turned towards her in utter confusion, and didn't have time to make a noise of pain or surprise before Julie hissed in his face, "I'm knocked up. But I'm a fucking Turk."

"Cool it." Elena stated evenly, still near the entrance, "Sephiroth probably heard that."

Julie's gray eyes flicked to Elena, then back to Cloud, who was eerily placid, as he was obviously having a dream.

She took a fistful of his hair, and repeatedly fiercely, but quietly, "I'm a Turk. Don't you ever think I'm going to need your goddamn help going to the bathroom."

Then, he was shoved through a stall door with enough force to knock him backwards onto the toilet. Elena entered the stall, and impersonally straddled one of his legs while cuffing his hands behind him and around the toilet's piping. Julie kneeled down to do the same to his ankles, until he was arched helplessly over the toilet.

Why am I having an S&M dream about these bitches? He wondered, his eyes becoming hazy and he felt consciousness begin to slip, or as he interpreted, another dream was fading in. Maybe Sephiroth would be in this one, too. He wouldn't mind being strapped to his toilet, among other things.

Then, something that smelled like hot death was waved under his nose, shocking him back to reality.

Reality? This? But it was too bizarre, too..

Julie's purse opened up to reveal what Cloud's utterly confused, and steadily creeping into hysterical mind interpreted as devices of torture.

The women knelt on either side of him, unsnapped his suspenders, and rolled his shirt up to his chin. As the cold bathroom air hit his skin his eyebrows turned up, and a low whimper that was the telltale sign of pre-panic echoed inside of his full mouth.

"Shut up." Elena said evenly, and began placing the suckered ends of wires strategically on Cloud's chest, stomach, and forehead.

Electrodes! Lobotomies! Torture! Cloud now whimpered loudly, and he yanked experimentally at his bound limbs.

"Shut up." Elena said again with the click, the cold barrel of a gun suddenly pressed to his forehead.

And that was the end.

Cloud was murdered.

His dead body was defiled repeatedly by a gross janitor, then ground up for meat for the Psychic Food restaurant. Sephiroth thought he had been stood up, and left without giving Cloud a second thought, ending up with a tight-assed Junish SOLDIER who was taller, smarter, wittier, sexier, and stronger than Cloud ever could have been, and the two soul mates lived out the rest of their lives in delirious ecstasy. His mother forgot about him since he never called again, married an old fashioned, romantic sort of fellow and made a new son; heterosexual, confident, no cowlicks, and free of his father's genetic depression. The new son became a SOLDIER, gave his mother several grandchildren to fawn over, and caused the joyous family nothing but happiness and pride.

Cloud died without telling Sephiroth he loved him.

Cloud died without becoming a SOLDIER.

Cloud died a virgin.

Face to face with the harsh facts of his own demise, he sobbed and hiccupped pitifully around his gag. 

The two female Turks looked at each other in bemused wonder, then Julie softened to the point of tenderness and patted his knee, "Relax. Relax, Cloud. We are not going to kill you."

This was not much of a relief. 

Elena's gun disappeared somehow at her hip, "We're just going to ask you some questions. These wires aren't hooked up to anything that's going to hurt you. Just a little something to tell us how truthful you are. It'll be fun."

They were speaking to him like a doctor speaks to a hysterical child. Positive, likable, open. He stopped crying and almost forgot he was strapped to a toilet by two crazed women.

Julie pulled his face towards her, and braced her fingers on the buckle behind his head, "If you scream when I take this off, you'll be untied and naked on this toilet when Sephiroth gets here. We'll tell him you behaved lewdly. He'll believe us."

Cloud looked at Elena, who shrugged as if it couldn't be helped. First rule of interrogation – make the subject believe what you want them to believe, even if it's complete bullshit. Cloud's scattered mind was unable to realize that that made no sense at all, and instead decided that the smartest thing was to obey. He nodded earnestly at them both.

"Wise." Julie said before carefully undoing the buckle and easing the gag out of Cloud's mouth. In a move she probably would never have even thought about making had she not been in the family way, she wiped Cloud's drool covered mouth off with a handful of toilet paper.

"You okay?" Elena asked, also drying his tear streaked cheeks and neck.

Cloud nodded without speaking, as this situation was too strange for words.

"I'm going to ask the questions. Just say 'yes', or 'no'. And be quick about it before the General gets concerned." Julie warned.

Cloud nodded again, not wanting to be seen by Sephiroth like this. He didn't want to be seen as some sort of helpless little fool.

Julie spoke clearly and slowly, "Is your name Cloud Strife?"

"Yes." Cloud said firmly. They both looked at a tiny device that Julie held that all the wires were connected to.

"Are you 16 years old?"

"Yes."

"Now on this next question, and this question only, I want you to lie, for the base reading. Are you from Nibelheim?"

"No."

"Hurry up." Elena said from the stall doorway.

Julie continued, "Are you a homosexual?"

"Yes."

"Are you attracted to General Sephiroth?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any sexually transmitted diseases that you are aware of?"

"No."

"Are you a virgin?"

"Yes."

Both women snickered, and Cloud squinted one eye, "Have you ever performed sexual favors in exchange for personal benefit?"

"No!"

"Do you regularly use any illegal substances?"

"No."

"Have you ever hidden, or aided a Shin-Ra rebel?"

"No."

"Are you yourself a Shin-Ra rebel?"

"No."

"Do you have any concealed weapons on your person?"

"No."

"Do you have any concealed weapons in your dorm room?"

"No."

"Do you enjoy pain?"

Cloud looked around fearfully, really not wanting to answer this question in the position he was in, "..Yes."

"Have you ever had romantic feelings for a woman?"

He doubly did not want to answer this question in the position he was in, "….Yes."

"Do you have feelings for anyone but General Sephiroth?"

"No."

"Would accept anal sex from General Sephiroth?"

"Yes." Cloud's tone dripped 'duh'.

"Do you love General Sephiroth?"

Cloud opened his mouth to speak, but Elena cut him off, "You can't ask that question."

"Why the fuck not?"

"It's speculative."

Julie scowled, and looked back to her paper.

"Yes." Cloud said.

The women looked at him, then at each other, then at the tiny device Julie held in her hands. Immediately, they began to coo.

Julie looked at him, "When this is over, will you still be interested in persuing General Sephiroth?"

Cloud actually laughed a little, "Fuck yes."

Julie began to quickly pluck the stickies off of Cloud, thankfully not leaving any little red circles on him. Elena unlocked the handcuffs.

Cloud stayed on the toilet with his hands in his lap while they put their equipment and weapons away, then stood together looking just like a couple of friends out on the town. Turks. He had heard they were stealthy and intense. They're fucking crazy.

"Not a word." Elena warned.

"You do this to everyone he dates?"

"No." Julie answered, "Just you."

Cloud furrowed, "Why me?!"

Julie and Elena glanced at each other. Slowly, slowly, Julie's face scrunched until it all came together behind her hands in a full featured mess.

"He said! He said! He.. he said… HE SAID…." Julie was now sobbing.

Elena cleared her throat, "He said –"

"I can say it!" Julie sniffed hard, wiping at her face, "He said.. you were.. he said you.. he said you.."

Elena sighed, "He said you-"

"Shut up! I can say it..!" Julie growled in her throat and stared through Cloud, "Sephiroth.. said you are the most.. beautiful thing he's ever seeeeeeeen!"

Cloud was dumbstruck at the information every single one of his senses was sending to his brain. He had no idea what to do.

Julie was in shambles, speaking in a slurred, high pitched frenzy.

Elena interpreted, "If you break Sephiroth's heart, I'm gonna slit your throat while you sleep, then slit the throats of your entire family one by one."

Cloud swallowed. They were waiting for him to say something, and he chose his words very carefully, "I can't say for sure what will happen between us, but.. I think I'm in love with him. I love to talk to him. I love to be with him. He's so funny!"

"He is! He is very funny. In that .. way of his." Julie sniffed through her fresh tears at Cloud's admissions.

Cloud nodded, "And he's.. um, extremely attractive."

Julie and Elena tilted their heads a bit. Lesbians.

Cloud smiled at them, "He just feels good."

"Too much information." Elena shuddered.

Cloud blushed, "No! Not like that! We haven't.."

"We know." They said.

Elena looked towards the door, "We're finished here."

They looked at him. He slowly stood up, and carefully stepped out of the stall, feeling like he should have his hands up or something.

And they returned to find Sephiroth playing a game on his cell phone. He looked up at the three of them, "Fall in?"

Cloud reddened as he slid onto his seat.

"We're gonna be late for the movie." Julie said to Elena.

Sephiroth perked up, "What are you seein'?"

"Without Love!"

Sephiroth unperked, "Have fun, girls."

They each gave him a friendly hug, and then looked at Cloud. Julie rubbed his hair, "Thank you so much for your help." With that, they left. And the entire room seemed much more quiet without their large presence.

The moment the air settled behind them, Sephiroth asked, "Cloud."

"Yeah?"

"What did they do to you?"

Cloud's mouth became a line. They told him not to tell. But he didn't want to be dishonest with Sephiroth. Ever.

"Funny thing. They gave me a polygraph test."

"A what?"

Cloud swallowed, "A polygraph test."

Sephiroth scrunched his eyebrows, "A what?"

Cloud pronounced polygraph; "pole – eee – grawf".

"A lie detector test!" He finally sighed in exasperation.

Sephiroth jerked up straight in his seat so fast it alarmed Cloud, "Fuck. Are you alright?"

"They just asked me some questions about myself! I guess to make sure I wasn't like a spy or something.."

Sephiroth flipped his phone back open and began to smash buttons, "I'm gonna fuckin' choke them both."

"No! Please! I'm okay!"

Sephiroth stopped dialing and took a good look at Cloud. He was thrumming, clearly unharmed. But he had to make sure, "..They didn't hurt you?"

Cloud felt like his life had been put on pause, scrambled torture porn had been patched through due to technical difficulty, and now his life had continued on as usual. Hadn't he been strapped to a toilet less than 5 minutes ago with women pointing guns at him? Shouldn't he be a little bit.. oh, emotionally scarred?

But he wasn't, at all. If he felt anything, it was pride in the fact that he hadn't shit his pants, and a little giddy that he had evaded his unfortunate demise scenario. He was alive and well.

"No, I'm not hurt at all. I feel sort of.." He waved around his napkin nonchalantly and put it in his lap, "..I feel good!"

Sephiroth smiled. He was aware that questioning from Julie and Elena did not involve just questioning, and that the thrumming he felt in Cloud was probably his adrenaline. A post-trauma high was something Sephiroth could relate to, and while he still planned on choking the girls, he let the subject drop.

It was then that their strange food arrived.

No frills, it was a fucking pickle and cheese sandwich with hot sauce and vinegar thrown on top. Sephiroth's meal looked worse than vomit.

"Enjoy." She said, then left.

Cloud grimaced, "I don't know how I feel about this."

Sephiroth looked at the atrocity on his plate, "..I've had worse."

"What could be worse than that?"

"Cockroaches."

Cloud stared at his beloved. After all the strange little Sephiroth-isms he had become privy to thanks to their phone conversations, was he really surprised that he might have, at some point resorted to eating bugs? Really?

Yes. Yes he really was.

Sephiroth picked up his fork, scooped up some of the viscera, and pushed it past his perfect lips.

"Holy shit." He said lowly, before stuffing in two more bites. He suggested with a very full mouth, "Try yours." Though it sounded like 'Ty whores.'

Cloud frowned down. His mother said that pickles made him throw up once as a baby. He really didn't want to throw up on their date, and his stomach felt a little bit friendly after what went down in the ladies' room anyways.. but Sephiroth seemed as happy as a pig in shit with his meal, so Cloud picked up his sandwich, and grimaced as he took a bite.

His taste buds writhed in ways that they never had before. Cloud snapped it up.

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows in a 'See?' sort of way.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud entered the darkness of the apartment first, Sephiroth closing the door and locking it behind them.

It was a strange brand of nervousness that he was feeling. His heart was just a bit quicker than usual, his hands just a bit shaky. But nothing about Sephiroth or his apartment was frightening, no no. Cloud felt safe here.

Sephiroth hit the lights. Cloud walked into the living room, unzipping the oversized jacket from himself. He took it off and draped it on the arm of the couch.

"Sexy." Sephiroth accused.

Cloud turned around in surprise, "Huh?"

"Huh?" Sephiroth mimicked, coming closer.

Cloud smiled shyly as his heart quickened a little bit more, "What did I do?"

Sephiroth shook his head, "You don't hafta do much. You are.." He pulled Cloud lazily forward by the suspenders, "..so goddamn hot."

Something flashed across Cloud's face. Something that didn't belong there. But in an instant it was gone, replaced by a look of pure seduction, and a trail of his small palms up Sephiroth's stomach and chest went with it.

But that.. look. Sephiroth wasn't sure what it was, and the quickly simmering heat in his blood begged him not to talk anymore.. but he had to know, "Everything okay?"

Cloud's hands stilled on Sephiroth's chest before he melted against it, and his voice deepened a touch, ".. I've missed you so bad..you don't know how bad.. I was sort of worried that.. maybe you might not want me anymore after being away. After having time to think about it."

Bullshit. Sephiroth thought.

Instead of telling him, he showed him. He turned his head down to catch soft lips, letting them taste every bit of the hunger and aching need he'd held back in the dorms. Cloud returned it like a slingshot, hugging Sephiroth warmly around his neck.

He pushed the suspenders down Cloud's shoulders and arms, until Cloud shrugged fully out of them and they fell against his hips. Sephiroth didn't waste time before pulling up the cute little t-shirt, which Cloud obediently raised his arms to be instantly rid of. Suddenly there was so much softness to kiss and touch that Sephiroth didn't know where to start. He pressed his lips to Cloud's delicate shoulder, making a warm trail across his throat to the other.

Cloud pushed his fingers up into Sephiroth's shirt, caressing the ridges of his stomach and around his sides to his strong back, then eased it up, trying to mimic the smoothness in which Sephiroth had rid him of his own. But when Sephiroth raised his arms, the height issue proved to be a challenge. Cloud found himself with nowhere to go with it, even giving a little hop for the effort.

Sephiroth chuckled, offering no help and standing still in what he had meant to be a teasing fashion.

But now, Sephiroth had his arms raised, his back slightly arched, and his shirt pushed up to his elbows. He wore the smug expression, but it was Cloud who was at an advantage with him poised like that. 

"Fine, don't help." Cloud purred, kissing one of Sephiroth's nipples before pulling at it with his lips.

Sephiroth snorted, now catching on to things, and quickly yanked the shirt over his head.

Deep chuckling and shy giggling became a sort of language at that point, and they had a conversation as Sephiroth pulled Cloud up against him, ducking his head down low to exact some revenge.

Time seemed to slow a little bit, Sephiroth didn't nip at Cloud's chest in a ticklish way, instead he slowly, suggestively rolled his tongue. Cloud wrapped his arms around his neck and let him, closing his eyes to just experience the sensation of his skin being pulled into Sephiroth's mouth.

Then Cloud smiled and nuzzled the top of Sephiroth's head, "Are you going to send me away with a bunch of hickies again?"

"Do you want me to?" Sephiroth asked, kissing back up to Cloud's lips.

Cloud opened his mouth for a flirty response, but the words caught in his throat.

Sephiroth was standing over him. His forehead pressed to his. His hair draping everywhere. He was gazing down, melting Cloud with a look that he never in a million years expected to receive. Especially not from him.

It was easy to forget who he was over the phone, in his own mind. But his eyes, his hair, his smell. He really was General Sephiroth. Cloud gasped a little as he felt idle fingers run down his back.

"You sure you're okay?" The drawling, experienced voice asked.

"Sephiroth." Cloud murmured, completely still in his arms.

"Cloud?"

"Will you sit down? Please?"

Sephiroth gave him a long glance before stepping back and taking a seat on the couch. Cloud stood before him, emotions raw on his face. Sephiroth was rapt for whatever he was about to say.

But he didn't say anything. He widened the space between Sephiroth's knees with his small hands, and eased down onto the floor between them.

"Cloud.." Sephiroth murmured.

"Seph?" He responded, sounding far away, his attention absorbed by the body in front of him.

"..What do you think you're doing?" He asked whimsically.

"Playing." Cloud answered, his tone anything but childish, "Is it alright?"

Cloud began making a trail of kisses up Sephiroth's thigh, and thus rendering him a bit speechless. Cloud dipped his head down, and pressed his cheek to the warm, well tailored crotch of Sephiroth's pants. A long patch of telltale hardness was felt, and Sephiroth's knee twitched slightly in response to the contact.

Cloud had no intentions of teasing. He pressed his lips to it, kissing it through the fabric. Sephiroth's knee twitched harder.

When Cloud's tongue rubbed along the length, Sephiroth's knee lurched.

Cloud unzipped the couture pants, and eagerly freed Sephiroth's erection, looking at it and admiring it for a few long moments. Those moments seemed eternal to Sephiroth, as Cloud's pretty lips were parted, he could barely feel the gentle puffs of warm, excited panting. When Cloud licked his bottom lip thoughtfully, Sephiroth leaned forward just in time for Cloud to abruptly retreat and begin untying his combat boots.

He relaxed back into the couch, slightly disappointed as the boots were hastily unlaced and yanked off. Then Cloud slipped his hands under his thighs and pulled the pants down and off.

He then resettled, leaning down slowly, almost curiously.

Sephiroth held his breath.

Cloud's pink tongue snuck out past his lips, and touched the underside of Sephiroth's big cock, making a wet trail to the tip, where a soft, full kiss was laid. Cloud looked up with his lips still pressed against it, and Sephiroth let out the held breath, a dozen or so tiny curses flying out with it.

Cloud reddened considerably, and he closed his eyes to drum up his courage to open his mouth and lower it down. With the head of Sephiroth's erection in his mouth, he sucked on it tenderly before backing away, letting it pop out from between his lips. 

Every part of Sephiroth's body was now straining at full mast. Cloud had had too many fantasies about this to count, and knew exactly what he wanted to do. He felt a fresh rush of blood course to his own increasingly urgent arousal, and he parted his lips wide for a more ambitious mouthful. Keeping himself steady with his hands on Sephiroth's thighs, he took in as much as he could before he felt an uncomfortable bump on the back of his throat. He then tightened his lips around the thick girth, and pulled back in what he hoped would be a pleasurable fashion.

When his lips reached the end, he kissed again as it exited his mouth, and looked up for any sign of life.

When Sephiroth saw Cloud's blue eyes, he let out a shaky breath and said, "Goddamn."

Cloud took it as encouragement, and repeated the action. This time when he reached the tip, again he kissed but dipped his head right back down. Cloud quickly learned three things about giving head. The first was that it was not a silent affair. The room was filled with sounds of loud, wet suction and kisses, Cloud's labored breathing, and Sephiroth's raspy panting and profanities. The second, was that it was not a clean affair. His saliva coated Sephiroth and drizzled down the few neglected bottom inches to pool on his stomach and drip between his legs. Cloud gripped the part of Sephiroth he could not reach in an effort to keep tidy, but also found that it made him groan. He squeezed gently as Sephiroth's fingers spread into his hair, pushing it up out of his face.

The third thing Cloud learned about giving head, was that he absolutely fucking loved it. With one hand busy gripping Sephiroth, he snaked the free one down between his own legs to undo his zipper. His arousal had become too painful in his pants to comfortably ignore, and he quickly freed it. While sucking on Sephiroth, Cloud began to cautiously pump himself, not wanting to come, but far too excited to resist the stimulation.

Cloud could actually feel the blood coursing through Sephiroth's cock as the hands in his hair began to not only caress his head, but guide it. Instead of Cloud's previous long, slow strokes, Sephiroth asked silently for quicker, shallower ones. He let Sephiroth do the moving for him, and focused on working his lips and tongue.

Sephiroth's hands steered Cloud's head for several quick strokes, then perhaps two or three long, deep ones, pushing Cloud down to the point where he would just begin to worry about gagging, then quickly back up.

Soon, there were no long strokes required, and Sephiroth's hands simply followed Cloud's steady, quick bobbing motion, as he needed no extra help in keeping the right rhythm once it had been showed to him.

"Cloud.." Sephiroth gritted, half in pleasure and half in warning.

Cloud began making throaty noises of enthusiastic approval steadily around Sephiroth's cock, the tremulous vibration sending a fierce chill up Sephiroth's back again and again. It was then that Sephiroth noticed one of Cloud's hands working between his own legs, the muscles in his shoulder spasming in time with the sweet sounding moans. That in and of itself would have been enough to put him over the edge, but then Sephiroth looked down the line of Cloud's delicate, slightly arched back, down to where his pants were pushed past his cute, round ass. It was impossibly more cute and round than Sephiroth could ever have imagined it to be in this position. It was perked up slightly, and gently swaying back and forth from both the efforts of masturbation and sucking him off.

Sephiroth's hands fisted in Cloud's hair as he knowingly increased both the speed and suction to perfection. Cloud's hand flew out from between his legs to steady himself on Sephiroth's thighs, his low moaning turning into quick, ragged gasps.

Sephiroth stilled Cloud's head at the first shot, then very carefully pushed him down and up at the subsequent gushes and spasms, watching intently as his elegant throat worked to swallow, feeling his long fingers dig into his thighs. Sephiroth's almost uncomfortably hot semen tasted like a French dip sandwich. Cloud didn't know why, or how. Nor did he mind, he was expecting something bitter and awful. But that's exactly what it tasted like.

Spent, Sephiroth relaxed and eased his grip on Cloud's hair. Cloud licked and kissed him for a moment or two, before looking up desperately. His wild, burning blue eyes said it all.

It took one swooping motion for Sephiroth to scoop Cloud up off the floor, drop him down onto the couch and move to his own knees.

"Seph! God! Fuck!" Cloud growled, tearing at his pants.

Sephiroth was more than pleasantly surprised at this writhing enthusiasm. Cloud's cock strained upwards, almost as red as his cheeks. Sephiroth stilled Cloud's shaking hands, put them to the side, and whipped off the tight little pants in one smooth motion.

He then grabbed Cloud's thighs and yanked him forward, pushing his legs up and back, exposing everything Cloud had to offer.

Sephiroth surveyed it all like a satisfied overlord, then bent his head down low and made a long, slow drag of his tongue between Cloud's spread cheeks.

Cloud choked in his throat at this unexpected move. Then the choking turned to surprised moans as Sephiroth worked his tongue gently, finally getting the taste of Cloud that he had been craving for weeks. He pressed his tongue to the tiny opening, and felt it give just a little before reverted his attention to the matters at hand.

He moved his tongue through soft, honey colored fuzz and then finally up the surprisingly long shaft of his little lover. Sephiroth lowered his mouth onto it immediately and started in on a wet rhythm. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing, but simply mimicked Cloud's near expert technique and hoped for the best.

Cloud arched, wiggled, and pulled at the cushions of the couch, "Seph!"

..Unlike Cloud, Sephiroth was very interested in indulging in a bit of teasing. He slowed a bit, drawing a strained whimper from Cloud's throat. Also mimicking, Cloud thrust his hands in Sephiroth's hair and gave an encouraging push, but to no avail. Sephiroth perched his lips at the top of Cloud's erection and smiled. Cloud's eyes went wide, as the crack of Sephiroth's luscious bottom lip was poised directly above the slit of his cock.

Cloud made a noise unrivaled in desperation, "Seeph!"

And so Sephiroth was satisfied, and went enthusiastically back to work, allowing Cloud to guide his movements, and almost too quickly bringing him to a familiar point where his name was groaned repeatedly. He was all too happy with knowing that that would be a regular occurrence during Cloud's climaxes, but was none too happy that it was happening so soon. Next time, Cloud would have to sit on his hands.

Sephiroth's name turned into a long, shockingly guttural growl, and he felt a hot shot spurt in the back of his throat. If Cloud could swallow, he certainly could, too. He took it down with a slight shudder, and Cloud's fisted hands loosened in his hair, and started to pet and comb through it.

When Sephiroth considered the job complete, he sat back on his knees and regarded his little lover. Cloud was as red as a beet across his cheeks, the pretty flush extending across his chest and shoulders. He fell over sideways on the couch with a small noise of contentment.

"I think we should quit our day jobs." He sighed happily.

"That might be a wise career move for you, tripod."

Cloud lurched up, "What does that mean!?"

Sephiroth fell back on his ass in happy laughter, "You haven't figured that out yet?"

"Please tell me.." Cloud begged with his entire being, winding his legs and arms around Sephiroth's naked form.

"Mmm.. next time I'll show you."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Gen-Gen, you have a call. Apparently, it's.. um, mother fucking urgent."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes at both the nickname, and the harsh language wafting into his office, "Who is it?"

"Some woman by the name of April Strife."

Sephiroth stilled. Then, in a slight habit he picked up from Cloud, drummed his fingers lightly, "Send it through. Um, close the door, wouldja?"

The office bitch, as Shelly had come to be called, closed his door. In another moment, the light on his phone began to blink.

Cloud's mother. What could she possibly have to say?

Suddenly Sephiroth felt a boyfriend's guilt. He told Cloud that it was no secret, and wasn't surprised that he would have let his mother know he was seeing somebody. Was he supposed to ask for permission to date Cloud? Was that how they did things in Nibelheim? Was he about to get bitched out for turning Cloud gay, or some such nonsense?

That boy is as about as straight as a crooked fuckin' line. If she couldn't see that, she's an idiot.

He, for some reason, patted down his hair before picking up the call, "General Sephiroth speaking."

An entirely female, entirely quaint voice echoed through, "Hello there, General Sephiroth! Respects to you!"

Sephiroth let out a breath. An old world spirit. He was quite relieved, "Thank you, Mrs. Strife. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I've called upon you to straighten out some facts. I'm sure you know my son, Cloud."

"Yes.." Sephiroth kicked his feet up on his desk, no shame, nothing to hide, "I'm very fond of him, ma'am."

The voice giggled gleefully, "No need to call me ma'am, General. You're making me feel old."

Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow. The voice was remarkably similar to Cloud's over the phone. It was almost as if it were a female version of him, "I'm very sorry Mrs. Strife, how would you like me to address you?"

"April is fine, dear."

Dear. Aww. Sephiroth gladly turned up the charm, "April, then. What facts would you like to straighten out, April?"

"Is your fondness of my son.. shall I say, romantic in nature?"

Sephiroth wagged his foot up on the table, composing his words carefully, and trying to get the suddenly vivid image of Cloud bent over his desk out of his head, "They certainly are. You've raised an extremely charming and beautiful young man."

April made a noise of delight, "I don't doubt it. He's a wonderful person, General."

"Please call me Sephiroth."

"Aye. Sephiroth. I'm glad that your intentions, and Cloud's are in tune, then."

Sephiroth nodded, "Yes, they are."

"That being cleared up, would you like to know about our family? Our lineage?"

Sephiroth shrugged a little. Maybe it was Nibelheim custom? "I would love to hear it, April."

She giggled in a way that made Sephiroth's skin prickle. She laughed just like Cloud, "Well, our family came to Nibelheim 400 years ago."

"You don't say!"

"Our's is one of the oldest families to settle here. And since then, every single Strife has been born blonde."

Sephiroth smiled brightly, "That's precious!"

"It's true! Now, the really interesting part of our heritage comes from the winter of '02. Have you ever heard of it?"

Actually, he had, "It was the worst that continent had ever seen, correct?"

"Absolutely. Cloud's great, great grandfather and grandmother were traveling through the worst of it that year, with his great, great aunt, and her family. They were trapped in the mountains for weeks."

"And they survived it?"

"Of course!"

"Impressive!" Sephiroth let his small amount of enthusiasm show through his voice. These old worldly types clung dear to their family's stories. He'd listen all day if it's what it took to make her happy.

"Would you like to know how they survived?"

"I certainly would!"

"They ate his great, great aunt's husband while he slept."

Sephiroth stilled, then slowly cocked one eyebrow.

April continued, "See, while they were in that mountain, they thought they were going to die. My great aunt's husband made his final confessions, including that he had a mistress in another town. That night, they killed the son of a bitch and ate every part of him."

"..Quite interesting.."

"Indeed. And there's a saying in our family. If you hurt my son, we will have no qualms about cutting off your goddamn head, and then eating it." Suddenly April Strife sounded a lot less like an old world spirit, and a lot more like a chain smoking bar wench.

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes slightly, "..Understood."

"I'm so very glad that it is. Cloud Strife is not some naïve little backwoods fucktoy for you to use and dump off. You got me?"

He swallowed the jagged pill of his own indignance, despite the attack. It was done on Cloud's behalf, and that sort of attack he could live with, "Your ..concern is warranted. But know that I have no intentions of doing that to Cloud."

"You're a man, General Sephiroth.." There was a click of a lighter across the airwaves, and he could almost see the cigarette bobbing in her mouth as she softly continued, "..Cloud is just a baby. If you wanna return him, it better be in one fucking goddamn piece."

Sephiroth had to smile, "I think I'm gonna keep him."

A/N

AND WITH FURTHER ADO, A GIFT TO ALL MY SEXY, SOPHISTICATED REVIEWERS! I LOVE YOU GUYS TO DEATH!

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-69-Review-Gift-81782544

Chapter Images can be found here!

Sweet… owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-11-81782640

..Stupid – owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Well-it-sure-ain-t-81754636

1- 1- Thank you so so so much for your reviews and kind words. The healing process has definitely begun, and while it may not seem like it, a few words left on a smut site for me to read really does make my day. Thank you for that, and for what you have to say about this fic, thank you, thank you. Expect more presents at review milestones :3

2- 2- I know what you're thinking. That lemon was gutterbutt nasty. Apologies in advance, I'm rather perverted, especially lately. It's only going to get worse, you know.

3- 3- The psychic restaurant? I've actually prepared and eaten both of those dishes for myself. Sometimes.. You just gotta decide what you want to eat, and go for it.


	12. Love

Cloud, curled up on his bed in the dark, sighed at great length.

Tentative, was the word Sephiroth had used. Cloud mouthed it in the dark with a sneer.

"I'll be there around 4. Tentatively."

Tentatively, indeed. The little digital alarm clock finally flipped to 10:00. The lights in the hallway were vanquished. Curfew was now rocking and rolling.

Seph wasn't coming.

Un-fucking-believable.

Cloud at first, after having showered and changed after his last physical class of the day, had actually waited in front of the door, ready to tear it off the hinges at the first knock. Then he migrated deeper into the room to pace a bit. Then outside to wait by the entrance, perched on the fence and scanning the surroundings like a hawk. Then when it got dark, back upstairs to wait on his bed.

Six hours. He had been waiting on pins and needles for six butt fucking hours. And Seph was not coming.

He hadn't seen Sephiroth since their lovely third date. And Cloud already knew that there was a mission for Sephiroth this weekend, that Thursday night was the only night that week he'd have available. A curfew night, but at least they'd be together for a little while..

But now.. not at all. 

Cloud swallowed his threatening tears, picked himself up, and slipped down to the house phone. After hours, the hallway was thick and heavy with darkness, but memory and useless squinting led him down to the familiar crevice in the wall where the phone sat. He picked it up, and held his breath for a dial tone, hoping against hope that the phone lines weren't cut off along with the lights. It still functioned.

Cloud dialed Sephiroth's number, and not wanting to be accidentally tripped over by any other curfew violators, sat beneath the table with his tucked his legs up under his chin, listening to the mechanical ringing, and mentally composing something scathing to say.

Not outright scathing. Not like, 'Sup, asshole?'

Something smart, refined, and just a little bit dramatic. His mental darkness switched into overdrive, was eating up this rejection, trying desperately to think of the quickest way to cause some sort of pain to another.

'I waited for you.' Cloud mouthed to himself with a scowl, then nodded gravely, ready to pitch the words like Super Mario Brothers' fireballs.

"I'm so sorry, baby." Sephiroth answered sans greeting. 

Cloud blinked in surprise. His intense hurt had been completely wiped away by hearing those short, simple words. This had never happened to him before.

But he was still alone in the dark, and this replenished some of his self pity.

"It's okay." Cloud whispered sadly.

"It's not okay," Sephiroth drawled seriously, "You can dump me now."

Cloud shook his head as a smile spread on his face, "Nooo!"

"You're not? Damn. Well, at least bitch at me a little."

Cloud cupped his hand over his face and snorted, trying to keep his laughter silent.

"Not even gonna bitch at me?"

Cloud giggled softly, "I was going to, but you're too sweet!"

"Sweet?"

Cloud giggled again, "Yeah, sweet.. where the hell are you?"

"On a plane."

Cloud froze, "..I thought you were stationed, now.."

"I'll be back early tomorrow."

"..Why did you have to go?"

Sephiroth sighed the sigh of confidentiality, "Work."

Cloud felt himself get heated again at that blythe little answer, "You couldn't at least call?"

"I did. That fuckin' line is always tied up. Or some little snot hangs up on me."

He had a point. Cloud bumped his head against the wall miserably.

"I need you." He whispered, instantly feeling like clingy and ridiculous. He should have been used to not having any control over his motor mouth, it had been a lifelong affliction.. but he really, really hadn't meant to say that. At least not like that.

Because it kind of sounded like, 'I love you'.

"I'm so sorry," Sephiroth repeated, "Do you believe that I can make it up to you?"

Cloud scrunched his nose and couldn't help but melt a little, "..How?"

"Would you like another tourist t-shirt?"

"Noo."

"How about more flowers to scarf down?"

"Noo."

"..How about a slumber party tomorrow night?"

"..Huh?"

"I have tomorrow and the next day off, now. It was the trade for going on this stupid mission tonight.. I thought two days was a helluva lot better than just a couple hours. Stay with me tomorrow night."

Oi! Oi! Oi! Cloud completely forgot how to keep quiet, and gasped and giggled happily as radiant joy filled his brain and heart, "You're for sure going to be back tomorrow!?"

"I promise."

"When?!"

"Probably before you even wake up."

Cloud stomped his feet on the floor in sheer delight, "Then I'm cutting class!"

"Don't you dare."

"Oh, c'mon! I have three free days to use up before the end of the year! And it's Friday.. and plus exams are next week, you know it's gonna be a bullshit day anyways.. I'll make you breeakfaast.." Cloud crooned.

Sephiroth growled, "Just because you have those days doesn't mean you need to use 'em."

Cloud pouted, "How am I to be expected to concentrate tomorrow?"

"Just focus.. hey. How are you even on the phone right now? It's past ten."

Cloud tapped his fingers on the receiver, "I'm violating curfew?.."

"That's it. You're gettin' it tomorrow."

"Oh, I hope so.."

"..Little fuckin' tease. Get your ass to bed."

"Okay. But I won't be sleeping.."

Sephiroth chuckled, "Alright sexy, see you tomorrow." 

"Come and get me tomorrow right after school! Pleease!" Cloud cried.

"Promise." He confirmed, not a hint of tentatively in his voice.

"The usual spot?"

"That's where I'll be."

"Seph..?"

"Mm?"

"Should I.. bring anything.. specific?" Navy outfits? Instant pudding mix? A Polaroid camera?

"Yeah. Don't forget your toothbrush. I don't share that shit."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Soo, I hear you got a nerdy boyfriend!"

Now that it was officially winter, it took much longer for the sun to rise in the morning, thus freezing Cloud to death. He never would have thought warmth would be an issue during run and boot camp classes, especially being a mountain boy, but he found the frigid air thick, heavy and painful as it wheezed into his lungs. But the humidity of Midgar was strange, and towards the afternoon it got rather warm. So, he bought a uniform pullover hoodie from the school store (the one that had "FUTURE SOLDIER" emblazoned on the back), and currently had the hood strings pulled and tied tightly enough to resemble Kenny from South Park.

"He is not!" He muffled from underneath to hood.

"That's just what I heard!"

Cloud untied the strings, and smiled at Skylar, who had run up beside him. This morning they were urged to converse with each other during the run to further torture their lungs and bodies.

"Who said that about him?"

"I don't remember exactly. They just said he was a big, tall nerd."

Cloud felt certain that if 'they' knew his boyfriend's true identity, 'they' would do a few thousand Hail Mary's for forgiveness, "Well, he's a damn fine nerd, then!"

"That's all that matters!" Skylar said happily, keeping the pace, "How long have you been seeing him?"

Cloud looked at the ground for a moment, feeling a touch of awkwardness, "A month. Um. Do you have anyone special?"

Skylar snorted loudly, "Not so much. But don't worry about me, I'm not jealous or anything. I figured something out a while ago about us! Two bottoms don't make a right!"

Cloud laughed in relief, "Oh, so that's our only lot in life, huh?"

"God put us on Earth this way, then sent our asses to the military. I'd say that it is!"

"I can live with that!"

"Hell, yeah! So don't hold back, tell me about Mr. Hot Geek. What's his name? What year is he?"

Sephiroth didn't make Cloud a secret. But after speaking to him at length about it, it seemed simpler for Cloud's situation to just keep it on the down low.

So, put on the spot, he prayed for a name, "His name is .. Brody."

"I don't think I know a Brody.."

"He doesn't go here."

"Where did you find him?"

Cloud edited history slightly, "At a Halloween party.. he's a SOLDIER."

"Holy shit!" Skylar exclaimed with a large flail of his arms, "You're getting screwed by a SOLDIER!?"

"Well.." Cloud looked around to find that no other runners were near them, "..I haven't slept with him, yet."

"Pfft! An entire month and he hasn't bagged you? Does he have no game whatsoever or are you a tease to everyone?"

Cloud figured he deserved that. He gave a short laugh, then looked aside, "Well, he's busy.. I haven't really had a chance to see a whole lot of him."

"It only takes a minute!" Skylar pointed out.

Cloud laughed, "I hope my first time lasts longer than a minute!"

"You're a virgin?"

"Yeah." Cloud nodded.

"Cloud Strife is a virgin. Never would have guessed."

"Really?" Cloud glanced at him, "Why not?"

"You just.. don't seem like one."

Cloud smiled a little, despite himself, "Well, I've done some stuff.."

"Like what?"

Cloud swallowed. Now he was glad that he had kept Sephiroth's name a secret. He had absolutely nobody to speak candidly with about ..intimacy.

Of course he'd told his mother all about Sephiroth. He told her about his mannerisms, his humor, his He rattled on for hours, often through tears. He told her that he was happy to have Sephiroth, how he felt an out of body joy when he was talking and being with him, how he felt a terrible ache at not being able to have him always near, how he was scared to death of losing him.. and scared to death that he had fallen in love. 

She was amazingly calm about all of it, almost as if she wasn't even shocked or surprised that the romantic interest was reciprocated from such a godly man.

"Cloud." She had said through a cigarette, "Have you ever seen him eat?"

"Sure." He answered.

"That means he shits."

And of course Cam knew a less raw and weepy version of all that.

But he knew nobody who seemed qualified to talk to about sex, or ask questions, or even just confess his delicious sins to. He didn't feel the need to brag, per say.. just the need to say it out loud.

He finally did, "I went down on him."

Skylar snorted, "My grandma goes down on my grandpa. Big deal. What else?"

Cloud blinked a few times. Maybe a blow job wasn't that big a deal.. but it certainly felt like it to him. Maybe because it was Sephiroth.

"Um, I guess that's all really.."

"Oh, come on! You're telling me he hasn't done anything freakish to you?"

Cloud bit his bottom lip, "He did.. um, lick me there."

"Eww!"

Cloud screamed in hysterical embarrassment, "Don't say 'ew'! I'm not nasty!"

"I'm sure you have a lily fresh ass, Cloud. But I sure as hell wouldn't eat it!"

"Okay skag, what have you done?"

"Nothing crazy. But I'm no virgin."

"Did you do it here?" Cloud made a circular motion in the air to reference the academy.

Skylar giggled, and it seemed like a sound that rarely came from him, "Yeah.."

Cloud lowered his voice, "With who?"

"Phil Masterson."

Cloud guffawed, "I knew he was a queer! Oh! He has such pretty eyes!"

"And I did it with Mark Storms, too."

Cloud's scream echoed across the field, "How big is he? You have to tell me!"

Skylar sighed at length, "I don't know exactly.. I left my yard stick at home that night.."

They both cackled like wicked witches.

Skylar held out both hands dramatically, "I won't ever forget Anthony Huiliano.."

Cloud stopped, gasped harshly, gripped his chest, and fell backwards onto the grass. 

"1 POINT OFF, STRIFE!" Nurse Rhonda screamed into the microphone.

Cloud quickly recovered and picked himself up, eagerly upon catching up with Skylar, "Was Anthony good?"

He chuckled, "Oh, he didn't have to be! But he was the best kisser out of the bunch, by far."

"Ah, that's my favorite. I love to kiss.." Cloud sighed as his sense memory pricked with the imaginary feel of Sephiroth's soft, tasty lips.

"Kiss him when you come. It's the best."

Noted! Cloud looked over at Skylar, "So, how much does it hurt?"

"Not bad. Is he big?"

"..Very."

Skylar winced, "Ooh. And you're a little dude, too. Well, wax it up, you'll be fine."

Cloud nodded, "Does it feel good, though?"

"Holy amazing. If he knows what he's doing, of course."

Cloud's mouth became a line and he shook his head. Skylar narrowed his eyes at him, "..Both of you are virgins?"

"As weird as that is, yes."

Skylar smiled, "Best advice I can give is just make him go slow. If you try and be a tough guy and let him ream you, you can forget about walking for a few days. Just tell him if it hurts."

Cloud didn't say anything, only stared straight ahead in total dread.

Skylar laughed a little, and nudged him with his elbow, "Tell him when he hits it, too."

"Hits what?"

"Your clit."

Cloud laughed, "My clit? I wasn't aware that I had one."

Skylar let out a long, knowing sigh, "It's up there somewhere. And.. don't just lay there. It's easier to find it if you help out. It's more fun, too. Phew! I feel like a sex therapist!"

"You're qualified!"

He smiled and ran his fingers through his bleached hair, "So, when do you think you're finally gonna do it?"

Cloud beamed a shameless grin, "He asked me to stay over at his place tonight."

"Aww! Are you two in looove?"

Cloud shook his head firmly, "He's a little older, mature. We'd have to be together for a long time for him to feel that way."

"Sound logic. But are you?"

"..So much." Cloud said, and the look on his face caused Skylar to veer the conversation away from the subject entirely.

It turned back to Phil Masterson, his beautiful eyes, his cock and above average sexual abilities, and his latest attempt at internet stardom. Apparently he had gotten his hands on a vial of Ether. With liquid courage fueling his stupidity, he filmed himself jumping off the roof of the President Building, his intent to break as many bones as possible. The universe denied him any injury whatsoever. He landed with a thud, and walked away.

Beautiful eyes, but nothing too bright behind them.

The same could be said for all of the Shin-Ra Military Academy homos Cloud had come in contact with other the first semester. They all waved to each other like school bus drivers, and most if not all fucked each other regularly according to rumor, Skylar, and common sense.

He could easily see himself being a regular whore if he hadn't gotten his talons onto his beloved, but he didn't feel left out of the sexual red rover game. He only had eyes for Sephiroth, nobody else could compare. Cloud liked the fact that his lips had been only on his, and treasured the few experiences as the best he would ever have if it all ended abruptly for some odd reason. It was fun to gab and talk homo shop with someone, but Cloud certainly didn't need a bunch of notches in his belt from random military school twinks.

Then Cloud came to a realization that had him grinning ear to ear all morning.

The General of the Shin-Ra army, his beloved, his dear, his hero, his smooth, milky skinned, beautiful one.. was a twink, too.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

After hand to hand, Cloud ran as fast as he could back to the room. He quickly dried his hair while he violently fired up his flat iron. Waiting for it to heat up, he dumped everything in his bag out onto his bed, then began to stuff things in it that he might or might not have needed.

A t-shirt and jeans for tomorrow, sleep pants, toothbrush (no other toiletries, as he wanted to borrow as much from Sephiroth as he could), mp3 player, clean socks, lube of course…what else?

Cloud scurried into the bathroom, swiping the now smoking hot flat iron through his hair a few times before ripping it out of the socket, and adding it to his bag.

He pulled on a simple black and white striped t-shirt, the pair of jeans with gaping holes behind the knees he wore upon the fateful orientation eve, and yellow sneakers.

Cam wasn't home yet, but he didn't have time to wait around to say goodbye. It was 4:06. Out the door he flew.

He dodged any and all attempts at conversation with a loud utterance of "BUSY!" as he cut through the grass. People wanting to form study groups the weekend before finals? Were they out of their minds!?

He booked to the parking lot, where even from a distance, he could clearly see the black idling tanks' brake lights on the far side. 

He bounded to the passenger door and seized the handle, only for it to wiggle limply in his hand.

He slapped on the window, "Seeeph! Please let me iiin!"

When he heard the unbolting click of the automatic locks, Cloud ripped it open and clamored up into the vehicle, throwing his arms around the man in the driver's seat.

He registered pale hair, green eyes, and beautiful, smiling lips before he began to kiss them with vigor. At once Sephiroth accepted the onslaught, laughing a little at the very intense, sudden urgency.

Cloud was kissing like a porn star, tasting like a glutton, moaning like a lost soul, and not caring if the entire world was watching.

"Can we go?" Zack's voice cawed from the backseat.

Cloud leapt up from his position, which was sprawled on all fours on the passenger seat with his ass waving in the air, and gasped, "What are you doing here?!"

Zack puffed out his cheeks rhythmically in a show of revulsion, "Getting a ride home!"

Cloud quickly sat down properly in his seat and closed his door, "Oh. Um, sorry."

"Don't be." Sephiroth said, leaning over and planting a warm kiss on Cloud's cheek.

The simple little peck sent a shock wave straight to Cloud's groin, and he turned his head in a daze. When Sephiroth didn't pull away, he touched his lips to his and slowly delved his tongue back into that welcoming mouth, melting all over again. By the time he felt Sephiroth's fingers glide up his neck and into his hair, he'd forgotten there was a straight man in the back seat.

"Take me home!" The straight man cried.

Cloud laughed into the kiss, and Sephiroth suggestively sucked his tongue as in a promise for more later.

"Zack, you are the bane of my existence." Sephiroth muttered with a humored glance in the rearview mirror, then began to drive. A little faster than usual, if that was possible.

"Sephiroth, you are an overgrown bully with boundary issues. To think my innocent little baby sister Cloud turns into a freak on wheels once he gets a whiff of your pheromones! I guess you never know about the sweet little ones."

Cloud piped up, "I'm not a freak! I just never get to see Seph.."

"Baby.." Sephiroth murmured softly, putting a hand over his.

"This is certainly cozy!" Zack declared, "Last time I was with the you two morons, you were undressing each other with your eyes all damn night and fucking each other with your knees at the bar! Now we have pet names and make out sessions! Progress! That's what I wanna see!" Zack amended with a shudder, "Well, I don't wanna see it.."

Sephiroth rumbled from the driver's seat, "As if I don't have to see tonsils and spit when you and Aerith are together. Gimme a fuckin' break!"

"Well excuse me for not wanting to sit in a car with two guys and their boners!"

"What do you care? It's in my pants. Unlike you that time on the train – "

"You just won't let me live that down will you?" Zack screeched, "Your shrewd ass just won't let it go!"

"I'm waitin' on the fuckin' emotional scars to fade."

"What happened on the train?" Cloud asked.

Sephiroth chuckled merrily, "I leave the train room for one goddamn minute – "

"You were gone longer than a minute!" Zack cawed.

" – And when I get back, this stupid son of a bitch – "

"Alright, you know what? You might want to dredge up ancient history, but I am all about moving forward!" With that, he popped his head between them and smiled personably at Cloud, "Hey you."

Cloud giggled, "Hey, Zack."

"Congratulations on the relationship. Now, please, please, I, as well as the rest of the Shin-Ra army implore you.. pop his cherry! This one's over-ripe and beginning to go bad!"

"Fuck you." Sephiroth drawled.

"No, fuck you!"

Sephiroth brought his elbow back and it connected sharply with Zack's chin. Cloud heard a crack that made him cover his mouth with his hands in total shock.

"Watch your mouth." Sephiroth said evenly, smiling to himself.

Zack opened and closed his mouth a few times, working his jaw back into place. He then smiled brilliantly as he took an open handed bear swipe at side of Sephiroth's face with a loud, fleshy thwack, "Fat ass, that hurt!"

Sephiroth, not taking his eyes off the road, reached back, blindly yet accurately grabbed Zack by the scruff of his neck. Not his shock of dark hair, the meat of his neck. Cloud gaped in wide eyed disbelief as Sephiroth hauled Zack kicking and screaming and laughing with one arm up between them onto the armrest.

Sephiroth then began beating Zack's head into the dashboard hard enough to rattle the windshield.

"Ain't. Supposed. To call. Your superior. Fat." Sephiroth said with each pounding of Zack's skull.

Zack wiggled free, or maybe Sephiroth let him slip away, and into the back seat. Cloud looked at him in half horror, half hysterical amusement, only to find not even a scratch on him. He was damn surprised Zack still had his front teeth. But no nosebleed, no nothing.

And no lesson learned, either. Zack stole the end of Sephiroth's silver mane and threw it all over his head into his face, "Nice wig!"

Sephiroth reached back with one lightening quick finger and poked Zack in the eye, "Nice colored contacts."

Zack gasped dramatically. There was no worse insult to a SOLDIER!

Red light. Sephiroth put the tank in park before turning on his knee in his seat and looming up over Zack, who narrowed his eyes up at the General in challenge. And the bitchslapping began.

Cloud was highly entertained, but all it took was one ill timed duck from Sephiroth for him to be thwacked on the arm by Zack's lightening quick palm.

"OW!" Cloud yelped before he could stop himself, and both men immediately froze.

Suddenly the vehicle was filled with soft, masculine sounds of regret.

"Are you okay?" Zack asked sheepishly, perched over Cloud's headrest, "Did I hit you hard?"

"Of course you did, ass." Sephiroth frowned disapprovingly at the blossoming red splotch.

Cloud was very embarrassed by all of this attention, especially since they had moments ago been beating each other's brains out without leaving a single mark, "No! No! I'm okay. It doesn't hurt." He lied, wincing when Sephiroth ghosted his fingers over it. 

"Have you ever been cured before?" Sephiroth asked.

Cloud's jaw dropped at the decadence of such a suggestion, "Seph, no! You don't have to waste that on me! It's nothing!"

Zack grinned, "Aw, it's no big deal, Cloud! Let him, it's fun!"

Cloud blinked uneasily, "..Okay.."

Sephiroth leaned down and planted a warm, soft kiss on the area of the slap. Cloud anticipated a tingle, or a coolness. But he felt absolutely nothing as the redness bled away, and he suddenly forgot what the pain felt like.

Sephiroth smiled, and Cloud was smitten.

"That was smooth." Zack commented.

"I try. Next time I'm makin' you take the fuckin' train."

"Why should I have to shell out 2 gil when you're going my way anyways? And I can't beat the company!" He said with a stretched arms to pat each of them tenderly on the head, "..Except maybe this one," And he swatted Sephiroth, then petted his scowl away.

They soon pulled up to a non-descript apartment complex, and Sephiroth swung into a parking spot.

"So, what are you doing this evening, gentlemen?" Zack asked as he undid his seatbelt and opened the door.

Sephiroth looked at Cloud, "Anything he wants to do."

Cloud blushed, and said, "I'm starving."

Zack slammed the door shut and merrily popped his head between their seats, "Our paths are united!"

"We don't want you." Sephiroth said with a light tap to Zack's face with his elbow.

"But I want food, too!"

"Eat shit." Sephiroth suggested.

"Cloud, don't you want me to come have dinner with you guys?" Zack grinned with every single tooth in his head.

Cloud smiled back sweetly, "Get out."

"Alright! Alright! You know what? Sephiroth, you're a fatass, a con artist, and a bastard, and you've trained Cloud to be a bastard, too! You two were made for each other!"

And with that Zack slammed the door, and knocked his fist on the hood as he walked past, and disappeared inside the building.

Sephiroth gave a long, weary sigh as he backed out and drove away.

"Did you bring the CD?"

Cloud reached into his bag with a smile, and withdrew the Touch Society CD that had been in his custody. Sephiroth popped out whatever was in the player and tossed it into the backseat.

"Let's hope it still works with you licking it all the damn time."

It did. And Cloud realized that listening to the CD with Sephiroth was different than alone. Every single word made sense, and every noise just fit.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"I could drink forever." Sephiroth muttered, "What's the biggest?"

The concession stand man held up a cup size that looked more like a trophy, and Sephiroth made a low noise of appreciation.

They had decided to forgo a restaurant, as the late afternoon was turning into a lovely, cool evening. It was sidewalk hotdogs under the plate, and Cloud couldn't have been more thrilled.

"And you?" The man asked Cloud.

"A hotdog, and.." All the cup sizes were grossly disproportionate, the small was more like a large in his opinion, "A small lemonade. Oh, could you put pickles on it?"

The man nodded and began to construct the order.

"Just one?" Sephiroth asked.

Cloud shrugged, "Yeah."

"You sure you don't want more?"

Cloud looked at the giant hotdog, oversized much like the stand's cups. It was more than enough to satisfy his most ravenous craving for stuffed, processed mystery meat, "Seph, I'm fine with one."

"Two for him, three for me." Sephiroth told the man, overriding Cloud's wishes, "If you don't want it, I'll take it."

They sat down on the curb with their food. Cloud with his two pickle covered hotdogs and a lemonade, and Sephiroth with three drowning in mustard, plus his inflatable pool sized beverage.

Sephiroth took three huge bites, almost half of the first hot dog, and chewed with a sigh.

Cloud took a small bite of his and watched the cars roll by in blissful food silence.

"Is it good?"

Cloud smiled, "It's awesome."

Sephiroth hummed as a smile teased his lips, "As good as adulterous family members?"

Cloud stopped chewing, "..What did you just say?"

Sephiroth's eyebrows flitted up as he took a long drink, "Oh, nothing. I just heard some colorful local history of Nibelheim recently."

Cloud took a drink, "..You talked to my mom, didn't you?"

"She gave me a call."

Cloud sighed, turning pink, "It's a fucking family thing. Whenever someone gets a new dear they have to rehash that story. I'm sorry."

"Don't be, it's not everyday I get threatened with cannibalism. I thought it was very sweet. And of course, I got to hear more about you."

"What? You conversed? For how long?"

Sephiroth shrugged, "About 40 minutes."

"Ah! What did she tell you!?"

"A lot of what you already did. That you love records and bein' an obnoxious little bastard. That your childhood wasn't easy for you."

Cloud took another bite, "Did you have a lot of friends growing up, Seph?"

"No. I don't think I really began to make friends 'til I was older. In the army."

"But you have a lot of them now?" Cloud said optimistically.

"Sure, I guess. Do you?"

Cloud shrugged a shoulder, "I guess. No. I know people, I talk to people but.. not really many friends. My roommate is my only real friend."

"Totally hetero, right?"

Cloud stopped chewing and a smile spread across his face, "What if he wasn't?"

"I'd kill him."

Cloud's partially chewed food greeted Midgar as his jaw hit the pavement. 

Sephiroth gargled, "Fuck. It's a joke. Close your mouth!"

Cloud quickly did, "Hetero! He's got a girlfriend with tits and everything."

Sephiroth relaxed a bit, and his legs spread wider, laying his thigh along Cloud's, "My best friend is a guy too, so I know how it is."

"Zack seems like a really good friend to you."

"He is. I hate him, but he is."

"Hey, Seph.." Cloud smiled, taking a small, shy bite, "..happy anniversary."

Sephiroth smiled at him sadly, "I'm sorry we missed it."

Cloud blinked, "It's today.. the first of the month, remember?"

"No, it was yesterday, the last day of the month. Halloween, remember?"

"But we weren't official until the next day!"

Sephiroth shook his head and smiled slowly, "You were mine on Halloween."

Cloud opened his mouth, then closed it as he felt his body racked with tiny shudders and barely contained bliss. He traced the condensation on his drink and could only grin down at the asphalt.

Sephiroth looked at him, "But you have a point, it wasn't official. And I would hate to miss our first, so, happy anniversary." He knocked his enormous cup into Cloud's.

Cloud, careful to keep a little safe public distance, pushed his forehead into Sephiroth's arm, "..I want lots more of them."

A sigh, "You can have all you want. 'Til you get sick of me, that is."

A hearty laugh, "What will I do the day I get sick of General Sephiroth? Shrivel up and die?"

"No. Find someone who can give you everything I can't."

Cloud pressed his leg into Sephiroth's, "What could anyone give me that you can't?"

He took a drink, "Time."

Cloud leaned on his palm, "..But it would be a waste of time. Some things are more important than others. Spending all the time in the world with someone else, versus.. times like this? With you? Fuck."

Sephiroth caught Cloud's lips and kissed him.

On the sidewalk. In public. With tongue. For longer than it takes to toast bread.

Cloud was again rendered completely smitten when he pulled away.

Sephiroth said, "I'm just some guy."

And I love you for it. Cloud thought as he snapped up the rest of his hotdog and wiped the bun crumbs off his pants, "I wanna play a game!"

Sephiroth rattled the ice in his empty cup, and gave Cloud a sly sideways glance, "..Should we head back to my place?.."

Cloud tsked and shook his head, "Not yet. I wanna play a game in there."

Cloud pointed to a place of business that he recalled seeing on his triumphant ride into Midgar. It was a store called Dirty Rubbers.

"You want porn?" Sephiroth asked with a drop of disbelief.

"It's not porn! It's clothes."

"..What's the game?"

Cloud wiggled his fingers, "Let's go in there, look separately for five minutes, and pick out something for each other to wear!"

"I'm not wearin' a goddamn thing from that store."

"Just to try on! Just to wear for one minute!"

Sephiroth shook his head, "Don't think so."

Cloud went on all fours on the sidewalk, "Pleease! You said we could do whatever I wanted today!"

Sephiroth sighed, and while it sounded an awful lot like defeat, he said, "Not a chance in hell."

Cloud pouted, "Please?" And then he got a little closer, "Please?" And then he pressed his lips to Sephiroth's cheek, "Please?" And then he pressed it again, dragging them over to Sephiroth's ear, "Pleease..?" And breathed warmly inside, whispering, "..oh pleease, Sephy.. pleease..?"

He stood abruptly, "Get the fuck up. I'm followin' you."

Cloud wailed in victory, squirreled away the priceless knowledge that begging pretty could get him anywhere, and marched off to the entrance of the shop.

He stopped and looked behind him up at Sephiroth, who was glaring at the mannequins in the window.

"Well?" He asked impatiently.

"..Five minutes starts.. NOW!" And Cloud scurried on the through the door.

Sephiroth followed.

It was a boutique, dimly lit with piles of black leather everywhere. Sephiroth had to equate that black leather was what he wore almost seven days a week. So what was so different about this black leather?..

It was crotchless, for one.

And for two, the garments here were meant to look purely sexual. He never looked sexual in his uniform..

Sephiroth's mind then switched gears. He was supposed to be finding something for Cloud to wear. He peeked over to a flurry of blonde hair that was poking up from an aisle on the far side. All Sephiroth had to do was stand on his tip-toes to see what that little creature was into.. but this was a game, after all.

A challenge.

So, crotchless black leather. Exciting, surely.

But not very Cloud.

So he made his way around the perimeter of the store, steering clear of the blonde peaks of hair. He looked at the ridiculously revealing club wear, and pictured Cloud's streamlined little body in it. Cute more than sexy. Then he looked at the black upon black gothic crap, and picture it on Cloud. Funny more than sexy. And then he came upon a small section of a studded, spiked punk aesthetic. He could most easily picture Cloud in this, but he vastly preferred his clean cut little handmade punk style to fishnets, patches, and grime.

"Two minutes!" Cloud sang.

Sephiroth was in danger of losing this game and ending up in whatever outfit Cloud had picked up with no retribution. He considered just dolling his little one up in women's clothes for a laugh, before spotting something that actually moved his blood along a little bit.

Fetish wear.

And the cycle repeats.

Just like prim private school boys are sickly attracted to domineering schoolteacher bimbos as adults, Sephiroth was well aware of an impure fascination with the medical profession.

He stared down at prepackaged debauchery; a blonde woman glared off of a costume set, Nurse Ecstasy. Cloud quickly embodied her, giving Sephiroth a pretty pout for all he was worth.

Nice! ..But the medical crossed nipples and the lacy stockings.. too much.

His fetish was tiny, simple. It was never a specific person, or event. But in some of his more tasteless fantasies, the themes were there. In actuality, even seeing his friend Rhonda in a medical setting made him feel nervous, defensive, and a bit powerless. In his fantasies, the same; but flavored with eroticism.

Just.. something about the notion of Cloud asking to take his temperature got him a bit.. aroused.

"But I need to take it, Seph.. please let me take it.." Cloud said over his shoulder, pure smut in his eyes while he clutched the goddamn thermometer, "Give it to me.."

"I'll give it to you." Sephiroth assured, slipping the thermometer out of Cloud's hands, and sucked on it, getting it wet, "But I wanna take yours first.."

"Can I help you, sir?"

Sephiroth almost jumped a guilty mile high up into the air, but stopped himself before calmly turning around, "No. Just browsing."

The utterly pornographic looking young man motioned behind them, "Holmes over there said you might be interested in assless chaps?"

Sephiroth looked over to see two blue eyes sparkling with humor over the top of an aisle. They ducked down once they had been spotted.

"I would be.. but I already have a few pairs that I haven't broken in yet."

The clerk nodded in understanding, "I have the same problem," and went back to perch behind a magazine at the counter.

Sephiroth surveyed the fetish wear, and got down to business.

Just when his selection was made, Cloud cheered from the place he had been hovering, "Times up!" and emerged from the aisle with a black, shiny armload of horrors.

"Where are the dressing rooms!?"

The clerk sighed, "Behind the door that says dressing rooms."

"Oh." Cloud said dumbly, then smiled at Sephiroth, "C'mon!"

It was a small, dark red room divided by a black sheet, one entire wall being a mirror. Cloud giggled as he locked the door behind them and pulled the curtain closed. He dropped his armload onto the floor and pushed it towards Sephiroth, who did the same.

Cloud snickered loudly upon examining his outfit.

And Sephiroth tried to make sense of his, "..What is this?.."

Cloud didn't answer, and began to hastily undress. Sephiroth listened and squinted, trying to somehow see through the black sheet. Why was it even closed? He bent a little and peeked beneath the sheet. He saw Cloud from the shins down push his jeans to his ankles. Sephiroth's eyes widened for a moment then went narrow – Cloud was wearing.. the socks.

That wasn't a big fetish either, of course. Just.. a little fascination. Ever since he pulled off Cloud's jeans their first time together and found those things.. they'd been making cameos in many impure thoughts.

Sephiroth continued to watch as Cloud lifted his foot and reached down with one finger to push the bottom of his pants over his heel. He did the same to the other side, and the empty jeans hit the floor. After a soft rustle, his shirt joined it.

Naked.

Sephiroth started to draw the curtain and Cloud cried out and forced it closed, "Don't open!"

"Why not..?" Sephiroth began to slowly pull the curtain up from the bottom, revealing Cloud's knees.. thighs..

Cloud pushed it back down and a finger poked Sephiroth's chest through the fabric, "I'm not dressed!"

"I know.."

"Not yet!" Cloud roared, and Sephiroth decided to leave him be and backed off.

He quickly got undressed himself and took a better look at what he had to put on. And didn't at all understand what the getup was supposed to be.

A black rubber apron?

Sephiroth put it around his waist, and ran into a problem. Cloud's knee high striptease had him at full mast. He shrugged and tied the apron anyways and pulled on a pair of elbow high black rubber gloves, and knee high black rubber rain boots.

Sephiroth tilted his head at himself in the mirror. Was he supposed to be a serial killer? He kinda looked like Leatherface now. But there was one more item to put on : a little white triangular hat that Leatherface would never stand for.

He pulled it on his head and smiled in wonder. It was the sort of hat a deli worker wore.. was he supposed to be a butcher?

Sephiroth cleared his throat, "Ready or not."

Cloud made a tiny noise of panic, "Wait! Okay. No, wait! Okay, now!"

Sephiroth threw open the curtain.

Cloud stood shyly in tiny white vinyl shorts with a lace up crotch, a longsleeve white straight jacket, a little medical crossed nurse hat, a stethoscope around his neck, and the sexiest socks on the planet.

Clear blue eyes moved slowly over him in awe, then stopped at his groin. Cloud wailed like a banshee. 

So, Sephiroth was still at full mast. Big deal.

He smiled handsomely and stretched up a little bit, eliciting more screaming from Cloud. "Explain to me why I'm wearin' this, please."

Cloud couldn't speak, and turned as red as Sephiroth had ever seen him, his hands flying all over to both cover his face and fan his neck. 

"If you don't wanna tell me.. I'm takin' it off." Sephiroth threatened, and began to pull at the tie slowly. Cloud was hysterical. If he wanted a living pin up, Sephiroth could be that for him.

After a few more moments Sephiroth had to laugh himself, and became far more interested in Cloud. He pulled the stethoscope off him and tossed it across the floor and out of the way. He dug his fingers into the back of the tiny shorts, cupping his perfect little ass, taking delight in his shudders.

His twinkling laughter dwindled into a provocative giggle as he dug his short fingernails into the rubber, "We should buy this.." Cloud trailed off slightly, seeming to be distracted by something behind them. Sephiroth looked over his shoulder, dreading to find some other customer or perhaps the police barging in to investigate the screaming. But it was the mirror behind them, and the blatant fact that he wore nothing under the apron.

Sephiroth smiled at him in the mirror, "You like that?"

Cloud nodded, and his fingers shot to the knot at the back of the apron and began to untie it.

"I want you so bad.." Cloud whispered when it came undone, and pulled on Sephiroth's ass, grinding them together roughly.

Sephiroth was shocked down to the floor, truly, but dug his rubber fingers into the thigh that circled his, "..Can you be quiet?"

"Probably not.." Cloud admitted.

"We'd better be damn fast then," Sephiroth said before sucking Cloud's lips into a kiss that felt like the shotgun at the beginning of a race.

Cloud panted as he slid down to his knees. Sephiroth took off the hat.

"No!" Cloud cried, then brought his voice to a careful murmur, "Leave it on.."

Sephiroth would have made some sort of smart ass comment, but Cloud's tongue began to immediately lap it him, sliding and rubbing over the entire length. He put his head against the wall and closed his eyes, wanting to just feel. Soft, wet flickers. Then he felt Cloud's warm, slightly trembling hand stroking, squeezing his hardness, then coming to rest at the base. Then warm, moist lips kissing him, making his lips tingle with the want to have the same treatment. Then, there was nothing but soaking wet heat.

Sephiroth opened his eyes to see a blonde head bobbing to and away from his groin in the mirror.

He swallowed his moans and looked down to see Cloud's lips and tongue work. It was easy to go quickly watching him. It was only a few moments before he had his hands in Cloud's hair, urging for harder, faster, and felt himself go painfully rigid, the only relief being Cloud's tight lips and wet mouth.

Then he noticed Cloud's cock pushing at the laces of his shorts, and his narrow hips thrusting at nothing.

That was no fun.

"C'mere." Sephiroth whispered, gently stopping Cloud's head and pulling him up to his feet. Cloud stretched up to kiss him desperately, whimpering and grinding and being generally too horny to do much of anything useful.

Sephiroth decided to help move things along by getting down on his own knees. It put him at Cloud's chest height, and he kissed one of his hard, pink nipples, looking up.

Cloud closed his eyes, and a manufactured calm washed over him. He relaxed back against the wall, and opened them back up. Sephiroth smiled, eager for what was possibly about to come out of that pretty mouth. 

Cloud cleared his throat nervously, put an unsure hand on his hip, and looked away with blood red cheeks when he asked, "..Symptoms?"

Sephiroth felt an almighty surge to his groin, "..My cock's hard."

Cloud's eyes fluttered for a moment, then his face assumed one of thought, "Anything else?"

"..I'm thirsty."

Cloud licked his lips, "Open your mouth. Stick out your tongue."

A drop of nervous sweat ran down Cloud's back as Sephiroth began to emit an enormous heat. He slowly placed his hands on Cloud's thighs, and even more slowly opened up his mouth, and pushed his long, red tongue all the way out.

Cloud couldn't help but stare at the teeth, which usually looked slightly feline when he spoke. And now he could see why, Sephiroth's canines were far too long, too curved and sharp. His two rows of teeth were straight, clean, and bright.. but curved in a way of a meat eating animal. Coupled with the furious burn of livid desire in his green cat-slit eyes, Sephiroth looked downright dangerous in what was fashioned to be a submissive position.

Cloud swallowed, not liking the thought of Sephiroth being forced into any submissive role, but wanting to follow through in what he started.. it was only a game, after all. He put a thumb in his waistband and pulled it over his erection, Sephiroth's eyes were immediately drawn to it, then flicked back up to Cloud, dilating.

He took himself in hand, said a prayer to Holy Mother Mary for courage, he moved his hips forward, putting his cock into the hot air of Sephiroth's mouth, not touching the walls of his cheeks, and avoiding scraping himself on the long white daggers of his teeth.

He pressed himself down onto the wet tongue like a popsicle stick. There was a low rumble from Sephiroth's throat, but he didn't move a muscle.

"S-sss.." Cloud exhaled, and set his jaw, "Suck.. please?"

Sephiroth's necked snapped forward, and swallowed him up to his balls.

His moan burst from his lips, both fright and disbelief echoing in the sound. As before, no teeth of any sort were felt, but knowing those fierce chompers were hiding behind those beautiful lips, and watching them wrap and squeeze around his cock was maddening.

Sephiroth watched him writhe as he sucked him deep and hard enough bump his ass back against the wall rhythmically.

Cloud gasped his name sharply, but stilled his head gently. Sephiroth looked up in question, and Cloud spilled to the floor and pulling Sephiroth down on top of him. Their wet erections rubbed together deliciously, and that was when the General had had enough.

He ground Cloud into the floor, biting his lips to keep a handle on the vocalizations. Cloud did no such thing, panting and moaning against Sephiroth's shoulder as he ground back.

"I wanna come all over you." Sephiroth muttered on a carefully controlled, low exhale.

Cloud nodded against the floor, and whether it was an agreement or permission, Sephiroth mowed him down.

And then came a banging on the door.

"Hell-ooo?" Called the clerk.

They both went utterly still. Sephiroth only smiled slowly with wide eyes as Cloud's entire body went pink, right down to his ankles.

"Yes?" Sephiroth called with dignity.

"We have a line here, boys. I didn't want to use the key because.. well, that would be rude and improper of me, now wouldn't it?"

"We will be out momentarily." Sephiroth assured him.

After a few pounding heartbeats of silence, Sephiroth kissed Cloud softly, "Let's go home.." then pushed off of him, and went to his clothes.

Cloud smiled with deep inner satisfaction at that, and got up to put his own clothes back on. Then he stopped, and stood in the middle of the room, "..Seph?.. I don't think I can make it.. go down."

The poor little guy was almost purple.

Sephiroth laughed loudly, and Cloud turned away, hissing, "It's all your fault!"

"This whole thing was your fault." Sephiroth argued, already at half mast and sinking while he pulled his jeans on.

"You're the one who opened the curtain with the big, fat boner!" Cloud complained, taking off the nurse crap until he was standing in only his socks, frowning down at himself. Not almost purple, purple purple.

"Think of something gross," Sephiroth suggested, pulling his shirt over his head and pulling his hair all through.

Cloud looked at him in a way that was less than innocent, then turned away again and whimpered, "I can't think of anything gross right now.."

"I dunno what to do for you, then.. tripod."

Cloud squinted one eye at him, "What.. does that.. mean?"

Sephiroth leaned one arm against the wall and just smiled. It was so glaringly obvious with Cloud in this condition that he just had to wonder if he was playing dumb blonde on purpose, "Look in the mirror."

Cloud glanced at himself, and Sephiroth could have sworn he saw his lips pucker and his hip pop out just slightly, "I know what I look like. What does it have to do with a tripod?"

Sephiroth began folding their garments back up, hoping a little conversation would help, "Let's take it to the roots of the word. Tri. What does 'tri' mean?"

"To give something a go." Cloud said smartly.

Sephiroth's nose twitched, "…As in 'tripod'. T-R-I."

"What language is it?"

"Latin, for fuck's sake."

"I don't speak it."

Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow, "Three, baby. It means three."

"Oh." Cloud said thoughtfully, and plopped down on the bench next to his clothes. 

Sephiroth had to smile, "Let's skip the lesson and I'll just tell ya that 'pod', means foot, or leg. You follow?"

A light came on behind Cloud's eyes after a moment, "Oooh! So a camera stand has three legs, because the word 'tripod' means three legs!"

He crossed his arms and looked down at himself.

Seated, Cloud's blaring erection reached almost halfway down his thigh.

Just as it dawned on him, Sephiroth chuckled softly, "..and you have three legs."

Cloud blinked, then very carefully asked, "Are you calling me.. short? Or are you saying I have a long..?"

"Both."

Cloud screamed in frustration, "You couldn't have just told me!?"

Sephiroth sat on the floor to tug his boots on, "Where's the fun in that?"

Cloud yanked his shirt over his head, "Well if I knew all that, I would have just told you that you're wrong. I'm exactly average.. penis-wise." He frowned down at his overbearing, pompous erection. Still purple.

"But your height is below average," Sephiroth pointed out merrily, "So you have a pretty long situation down there!"

Cloud made a face, "Gee, thanks. You're 6-feet tall with a mastodon cock, pick on someone your own size!"

Sephiroth tsked, deciding now wasn't the time to point out that he was actually 6'3", "Baby. I'm not makin' fun of you."

Cloud pouted harder, "I'm short, I'm little, and I have a hard on that won't die! I'm pathetic!"

"You're the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life."

Cloud's eyes shot up, but then cast down again, "..Ehh?"

Sephiroth kneeled between Cloud's legs, "I couldn't find a damned thing in this shop to make me want you more," He rubbed his palms along Cloud's thighs, "..In fact, you just sitting there with your cock hard and that little shirt on is the hottest thing I can think of."

Cloud smiled, but then tried to cover it up, "..You like me?"

Sephiroth answered by kissing his lips warmly, "..C'mon. Let's get out of here."

Cloud babbled for a moment, then bit his lip, "I can't."

Sephiroth took Cloud's jeans in hand, and shoved his socked feet through them himself, "Then you're just gonna have to walk around town with a stiffy."

Cloud's hips jolted off the bench as Sephiroth brushed against him, "G-gg!"

Sephiroth pushed the jeans up his legs and thighs, thinking this was sort of fun since Cloud was so light, then pulled him up into a standing position to get them over his ass. Then, there was the problem. Sephiroth turned Cloud's hips this way and that, assessing.

"You wear such tight jeans. There isn't any room at all for this guy in there."

Cloud rubbed his eyes helplessly, "I know. Believe me, I know."

Another bang on the door, "You've got one minute gentlemen! We just lost a customer because of the wait! I have a key and I will use it!"

Cloud shoved four fingers into his mouth a bit down in terror, "What am I gonna do?"

"Can you come in under a minute?" Sephiroth asked seriously.

Cloud shrugged one shoulder, "..We can find out."

"We?"

"Fifty seconds!"

Cloud begged, "Help me!"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes and began to pump Cloud fast. He squirmed all over the bench, "Oh, shit! Seph! Easy! It's sensitive!"

"Forty seconds!"

"Fuck sensitivity," He said, and continued to harshly beat him off, "No time."

Cloud shook his head frantically, "I can't do it! I can't!"

"Thirty seconds!"

Moments later, the door opened. Sephiroth stepped out.

Without even really doing much but giving a few moments of expressionless eye contact, Sephiroth flirted with the line of perhaps ten people with various crotchless leather items waiting. Effectively, he drew every eye away from Cloud, clad in a rubber apron over his clothes, as he rushed past everyone with his head down to the register.

"You use it; you buy it." The clerk said darkly.

Cloud droned in a dumb tone, "Der. What do you think we're doing?"

Sephiroth dropped his armload onto the counter and leaned on it casually while it was all rung up.

"270 gil."

Sephiroth gave the clerk an overcast glare. Overpriced bullshit! But he got out his wallet and handed him a credit card anyways.

The clerk swiped it with disinterest, then took a look at the name. He handed the card back immediately, "..Sir.. you ..found everything alright?"

Sephiroth nodded.

There was a moment where the machine was approving the card, the three stood in utter silence. The clerk staring at Sephiroth; Sephiroth trying not to even look at the clerk; Cloud stock still with his eyes closed, probably in prayer.

And through the wonders of technology the card was approved and the register pounded the receipt out. The clerk put it on the counter with a pen, "Please come back when you're interested in new assless chaps, Sir."

Sephiroth signed his name, took the bag, and herded Cloud out onto the sidewalk.

"Wait a minute," Cloud murmured, faced the store and zipped himself up under the apron, then took it off, handing it to Seph, "Phew!"

Sephiroth smiled widely down at Cloud.

"What?" He asked.

Sephiroth chuckled, "Nothing."

That bulge in those little pants had to have been solid Cloud.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Don't you have any, like, good movies? Like.. Space Jam? Or Legally Blonde? Or The Goodbye Girl!?"

Sephiroth scowled, "Absolutely not." Then recalled, "I have Dumb and Dumber. Yeah?"

"That movie's stupid." Cloud declared.

"Sit down and shut up. I know what we're watching." Sephiroth said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Cloud went to make a beeline for the couch, but took a detour to his bag by the door, "Maybe we should get more comfortable.." He flirted, swinging it.

Sephiroth was too busy messing around with a Jiffy pop to notice, "Go ahead. You know where my room is."

Cloud deflated, then nodded and went down the hall. All the doors were closed, and Cloud was desperately curious to peek inside them. But he supposed he'd see what each room was in time.

He came to the end of the hall, to the only open door. Sephiroth's bedroom. It was dark, and Cloud decided to forego the light switch, because it was well lit from the huge windows on the far wall. He stood in front of one and looked down, feeling a slight touch of vertigo, then went to the bathroom and flipped the light.

Nothing surprised him about Sephiroth's bathroom. There were black and white checkered tiles, all black fixtures, and mirrors everywhere. 

Cloud sighed, If I was that ripped and beautiful, I'd spend all damn day looking at myself and jerking off. How does he ever get anything done?

He tapped his fingers on the glossy black tiled counter, and was slowly filled with perverse curiosity.

Watching the open door, he slowly slid the top drawer next to the sink open.. inside there was a flat brush, some hair ties thrown around, a bottle of CHI, and a blow dryer.

Cloud smiled and picked up the CHI. Almost empty; used!

So that's the secret, huh, Seph? He popped it open, took a teensy dollop of the fragrant hair oil, and worked it through his spikes. It did absolutely nothing for him. 

Disheartened, he put it back and slid the drawer shut silently, then opened the next one. A bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of band-aids, unopened syringes, gauze… Proactive Skincare Solutions.

Cloud screamed inside his head and picked up a couple of the green bottles to shake them. Used!

Aw, his skin is so fresh and pretty. God bless. He smiled and put it back, thinking that his beloved should come forward as a user and get an endorsement deal like P Diddy.

Then he shut that drawer, and opened the largest one on the bottom. It was filled with home improvement magazines. Cloud took one and thumbed through it, noticing the rippled edges, looking like they had gotten wet, then dried off. He imagined Sephiroth unwinding after a long day by thumbing through one of them in a bubble bath.

Cloud closed the drawer, and popped his head into the cabinet under the sink. There were some fresh towels, and some bathroom cleaning products. 

Continuing on his nosy rampage, he put his fingers under the mirror to see if it opened. It did, with a rather fucking deafeningly loud creak. Cloud hunkered down and listened hard to see if any footfalls were coming to end his investigation.

After a few moments of silence, save for some faint popping from the kitchen, Cloud opened the mirror and peeked inside.

More band-aids, deodorant, toothpaste.. and two tiny shelves stuffed with prescription bottles of varying shapes and sizes.

Slowly, with a nervous hand, Cloud carefully took the smallest bottle out of the bunch, felt pills scatter and sift inside, and read.

Sephiroth Shin-Ra : Take one every other day with meal orally, or as needed; never after B-7F.

He read it again before slowly replacing it and taking the largest out.

Sephiroth Shin-Ra : Take three daily with water orally; never after B-7F.

Cloud put it back and scanned the bottles until he found one that was printed with a red B-7F label.

Sephiroth Shin-Ra : Take only as needed; Call lab immediately. It was followed by a phone number.

Cloud pressed his palm to the childproof cap, prepared to open it, but something liquid sloshed inside. Cloud caught a chill suddenly. He replaced the bottle, and shut the mirror.

He had meant to find some Gas-Ex, or some hokey diet pills or something. Or maybe discover the secret combo of vitamins Sephiroth took to be so deliciously ripped.

Not.. whatever that was.

He knew SOLDIERs were enhanced people. That's all that junk was. Just.. medicine.

But he had gone and done it. He had gone and snooped, and now had a gaggle of questions burning in his mouth that he would never, ever know the answers to.

Unless of course, Sephiroth offered up the information. But he did realize that Sephiroth hadn't dropped his father's name. And that he was probably the only human being that went through life without a last name attached to him. Sephiroth was an entity, like Cher. It added to the mystique, and a younger Cloud supposed someone that drop dead beautiful and strong and famous could just do shit like that. But getting to really know him.. that didn't add up. Why just go by one name? Was he denying his last name? Was he really a Shin-Ra? Was he adopted?

Cloud then got a bit heated. Sephiroth got to talk to his mom. If only he could find the Turk and ask questions about Sephiroth. Although he always answered questions about himself.. Cloud still felt like sometimes, there were pieces missing.

He quickly took off his clothes and pulled on a pair of the blue pilates pants. He left his bag in the bathroom, then trotted out to the living room.

Sephiroth had his feet crossed and wagging on the coffee table, munching on the Jiffy pop.

"Fall in?"

"Yeah." Cloud smiled, and crawled up next to him on the couch, kissing his neck and shoulder over his clothes. Partially in guilt for snooping, partially in an overwhelming monsoon of love for the man, and partially because he could. 

Sephiroth kissed him back a few times, then gave him control of the popcorn, "I think I'm gonna change, too." And with that, he disappeared where Cloud had just come from, and he sighed of deep relief that he hadn't gone back there a minute sooner.

Cloud covered himself with the black and yellow striped couch blanket and settled in.

Sephiroth came back out in black loose bottoms tied around his hips.

"Zack gave me these. I'm only wearin' 'em for you." And declared, then slowly turned around.

Printed in bold white letters across his ass : HUSTLER.

Cloud choked on popcorn and kicked his feet wildly under the blanket, "Why? Why!?" He coughed raggedly. 

Sephiroth grinned and went to his movie stack, "Gag gift last Christmas. I dunno why I kept 'em."

Cloud hacked and coughed desperately until the popcorn seed skin dislodged from his throat, "Because you are!" 

Sephiroth took the remote and sat back next to him, throwing the edge of the blanket over one of his legs, "You ever see The Exorcist?"

Cloud shook his head, "Is it scarier than No Tomorrow?"

"No Tomorrow wasn't scary." Sephiroth smiled, pressing play.

"Yes it was!" Cloud balked, "It was a horror movie. Scary!"

Sephiroth shook his head, "No Tomorrow was not a horror movie. It was a piece of shit."

Cloud couldn't argue. But that piece of shit had given him a nightmare, "So.. is this about like, demons?"

Sephiroth nodded, "You'll see."

Cloud lifted Sephiroth's arm and put it around his shoulders.

Sephiroth did him one better and pulled him up into his lap, wrapping his arms around him over the blanket. He rested his chin on Cloud's shoulder and kissed his ear, "It's just a movie. Nothin' at all scary about real demons. You'll be able to toast 'em yourself next year.." Sephiroth kissed his smooth, warm shoulder, "Until then, I'll get 'em all for you."

Cloud smiled at that and pressed back into Sephiroth, "I've always been afraid of them. And ghosts."

Sephiroth squeezed him, "Don't be afraid of anything. Now watch."

And watch Cloud did. He was in awe for the entirety of the movie, gasping and clawing at the blanket at times, at others, jabbing Sephiroth's ribs for laughing at intense moments.

"Let Jesus fuck you!" Sephiroth creaked into Cloud's ear with a cackle.

"Seph!" Cloud gasped, "Don't even say that!"

When the green vomit came spewing out, Sephiroth dipped his tongue into Cloud's ear, eliciting a very satisfying little bounce from him, "Sssseeeph!"

Sephiroth had seen this movie time and time again, which was one of the reasons he chose it. He was more interested in watching Cloud watch the movie. Towards the end of the film, he was entirely disinterested in it. Especially after behaving himself relatively well with a shirtless, beautiful boy in his lap for two hours.

He rubbed up his sides, up his warm, bare back and in between his shoulder blades, up his neck and into his hair.

Despite the fact that there was an exorcism happening before his eyes, Cloud moved and leaned into the touches, tilting his head like a happy cat as Sephiroth tiny rubbed circles over his scalp.

Before long Cloud was grinding against his lap just slightly, arching back against him, rubbing his hands up and down the long thighs that were flanking him. Sephiroth trailed his hands out of the blonde hair, moving his fingertips down Cloud's jaw, down his throat, and over his collarbone to his chest. Cloud moaned in his throat a little.

"Baby.." Sephiroth murmured in lustful reverence.

"I love it when you call me that." Cloud whispered while turning his head, his eyes a deep navy blue in the dark, and pressed open lips to Sephiroth's mouth.

By the time the credits were rolling, so was Cloud in Sephiroth's lap. Sephiroth's erection was wedged between his cheeks, separated only by two thin layers of pajama pant material.

Sephiroth requested against Cloud's lips, "I wanna take you to bed, now.. 'kay?"

Cloud turned in his lap, letting the blanket fall to the floor, "Okay.."

"Hey. We don't have to do anything.. serious because you're sleeping here." Sephiroth said, kissing Cloud's face, "That's not why I asked you to stay."

"I know. But.. can we?"

And then, they were on the move. Sephiroth held Cloud with one arm while flipping off the television, and in the now pitch black apartment, carried him to his room.

Cloud didn't exactly recall when they had landed on Sephiroth's bed. Their mouths were connected, each other loathe to break the kiss for even a moment. Their pants were off almost as soon as they had the sophisticated thought processes to remove them. Then, it was only hot skin, and silver hair.

After a kiss that seemed to last for hours, Sephiroth broke it slowly, "Cloud. Do you still have that..?"

Cloud smiled, "It's Pleasureglide."

Sephiroth made a face like he didn't care what the fuck it was called, "Where is it?"

Cloud pointed to the bathroom, and Sephiroth went and retrieved the bag. Cloud pulled out the tube, and after digging around for a moment, a condom.

After looking at both items, Sephiroth took the lube and motioned towards the other, "What's that for?"

Cloud wrapped his fist around the little foil packet, hiding it, "Um. Aren't.. shouldn't we use one?"

Sephiroth kissed him with a grin, "Worried about getting knocked up?"

Cloud huffed, "No. It's just.. safe. Isn't it?"

Sephiroth went still, seeming deep in thought, then nodded an agreement. He took the packet out of Cloud's palm, and set it next to them on the bed, replacing it with his own palm and fingers.

"You're the only one, though." Sephiroth said to him.

Cloud gasped just a little, not from shock, or fear. Cloud gasped because the vulnerable admission didn't paint an expression of regret on that handsome face. He looked sincere. Earnest.

Cloud gave a tiny, dry sob as he clung to Sephiroth, lacing their fingers together loosely, dipping their tongues into each others' mouths, their skin dampening with anxiety and anticipation.

Slowly Sephiroth sat up next to Cloud, took the tube of lubricant, and popped it open.

He squeezed some out onto his palm, and like Cloud upon his first exploration, seemed to be slightly fascinated with the substance. He spread it on his fingers, looked at it, then flicked his tongue out and tasted it.

Cloud giggled as his eyebrows raised in approval. Sephiroth smiled at him, squeezing more out onto his fingers, then eased down on his side next to Cloud, sliding one arm under his neck.

Cloud stared up at Sephiroth, laid his head back on his cradling arm, and spread his legs further apart.

Sephiroth wrapped his slick fingers around Cloud's erection first, moving his fist up and down gently, causing his breath to catch just a little in his chest. Then, Sephiroth's hand glided over and cupped Cloud's balls, one of the long fingers moving down further, stopping at the small patch of puckered skin between his cheeks. After circling it, getting it wet, the finger pressed into it.

One of Cloud's hands flew up to Sephiroth's free one, gripping it. It squeezed back firmly, his thumb coasting over his knuckles slowly. The small gesture relaxed Cloud more than words ever could.

Cloud closed his eyes, but tried not to hide from the feeling of something inside of him. The sensation was foreign; an invasion. But it didn't hurt, and that put Cloud into a world of relief. The finger pushed in to its' extent, then pulled out. And then it pushed back in very slowly, further.. further.. further..

Cloud furrowed his eyebrows, "You have long fingers."

"That's not my finger."

Cloud's eyes shot open to catch Sephiroth make the naughty face of practical joking. At a time like this!

Cloud bared his teeth and snarled, and Sephiroth leaned down to kiss them, melting the feral little expression into something softer, and they were lost in each other's lips once again.

Then Cloud tensed as the sensation inside him turned from foreign to downright alien. Now there were two fingers, each moving separately, wiggling. Cloud kept his eyes open, concentrating on Sephiroth, his beauty, his love for him, the rapt expression on his handsome face, the gleam of sexual promise in his eyes. But this new feeling.. Cloud did not like. It was actually beginning to make him a bit nauseous with anxiety.

As if sensing this, Sephiroth stilled his fingers and moved them as one, delving them deeply into Cloud.

And then, sparks. Cloud hissed sharply as his hips left the bed.

"Hurt?" Sephiroth asked.

"I dunno.. do it again.."

Sephiroth repeated the deep, smooth motion, and again Cloud cried out, his free hand seeking out Sephiroth's cock in an instinctive return of pleasure. He could not have been more encouraged, and dipped his fingers in fast and hard.

This time, Cloud made a noise remarkably similar to a dog's chew toy.

"Hurt?" Sephiroth asked again, his fingers immediately going still.

Cloud nodded, regrettably. The pain was dull, an ache. But he had to feel it, had to get used to it. He wanted to like this, to be good at it for Sephiroth. His longer, wider fingers were still nowhere near as long and wide as..

Cloud's head swam with virgin terror as the fingers gently pulled away.

"Don't stop." Cloud whispered.

"I won't." Sephiroth assured, reaching over for more lubricant, this time squeezing a little out onto Cloud's opening, and spreading it in and around with his fingertips, slipping them back in easily.

There was slight discomfort as they pushed up, a lightening bolt of pleasure, then a flood of soreness as they pulled out. Cloud moaned a different way for each sensation he was awash in, with each new stroke, trying to hold onto the good one for a little longer.

Sephiroth slowed his fingers, then pulled them out and away. Cloud opened his eyes to find himself being examined curiously.

"Cloud.."

Knowing what was being asked, he nodded quickly.

Slowly, Sephiroth reached for the condom packet, and tore it open.

"Use lube on the inner and outer surfaces." Cloud whispered, laying back to stare up at the ceiling.

Sephiroth hummed in understanding, and after a moment or two, he entered Cloud's vision, laying over him. Their flushed skin pressed together, and Sephiroth moved Cloud's slightly damp bangs out of his face with his clean hand, his fingertips trailing down to Cloud's lips. Then he kissed them, as he had been doing all day. And as all day, Cloud surrendered completely to it, the gentle tongue movements stirring the darkness behind his eyelids.

Sephiroth pushed Cloud's legs apart and eased them back. He had a moment of worry, wondering if he was about to be placed in some provocative, and potentially embarrassing position.

Sephiroth moved up to kneel, sitting back on his heels. He pulled Cloud closer, resting his bottom on his thighs, slightly inverting him, but not pornographically so. Cloud relaxed as Sephiroth gently bent his legs and moved them around his waist, holding them under his arms.

Cloud shut his eyes.

There was a pressure, a tension, a give, and a slide.

And neither were virgins anymore.

Cloud gasped out sharply, and Sephiroth answered with a low rumble, and a warm, reassuring hand cupping his neck. He sunk in until their pelvises touched with nothing between.

There was pleasure and pain for both, though the serving sizes were a bit unequal.

Sephiroth kneeled on the bed, his jaw slack in pure shock at the feeling of being inside Cloud. It felt so intensely good that it literally hurt, his small, unimaginably hot body gripping him to the point of discomfort.

Cloud on the other hand, was panting and sighing, his jolted nerve endings unable to decide whether to push Sephiroth out, or draw him in further, closer, more.

This bittersweet moment was just that – a moment.

Sephiroth stayed still inside of him as Cloud's erratic panting slowed to a deep breathing, and he relaxed again enough at ease to fully rest against Sephiroth's legs, and unclench his thighs. With this, he opened up, and the pain portion of Sephiroth's experience completely diminished.

Sephiroth pulled his hips away slowly, then dipped back down into Cloud as smoothly as possible, trying to recreate the preferred motion of his fingers. He did it again and again, watching Cloud's face carefully as it went through a wider gamut of expressions than Sephiroth thought was possible. Calm, pain, shock, disbelief, pleasure, and then something that looked as though he was about to burst into laughter.

The last expression puzzled Sephiroth, but there it was again and again.

Finally, he put a soft kiss to Cloud's knee and whispered, "What's funny, baby?"

Cloud opened his blue eyes in the dark and smiled up at him, "We're.. having sex."

Sephiroth smiled in surprise at that answer, but then let the reality sink in. They were having sex.

They were having sex.

Sephiroth eased Cloud's legs a bit further apart and down, and then leaned over him, pressed his lips to Cloud's, spreading his mouth open and sliding his tongue inside.

The angle changed, but did not hinder the insistent friction of Sephiroth's hips. He rested his elbows on either side of Cloud, caging his vision in with long limbs and pale hair. And everything in the entire world became Sephiroth.

"Seph!" Cloud said, and as if it was some sort of magic spell, Sephiroth began to move a bit faster inside him.

"Good..?" Sephiroth asked on a shaky exhale.

"Seph.."

That was answer enough. Sephiroth worked him.

Cloud wasn't aware that he had a song stuck in his head at a deafening mental volume, but was aware that he was throwing his hips up at Sephiroth in time to the beat. He was half aware of the pain, but fully aware of the pleasure. He couldn't help but be aware of the enormous heat radiating from Sephiroth, his breath, his sweat, his skin. Cloud wanted to live in these seconds of partial awareness, nothing existed but Sephiroth's body.

Cloud's ankles locked behind Sephiroth's back, keeping him deep, while his hands held the back of his head down, keeping their lips and tongues in contact.

Sephiroth slapped his hips into him.

It was unbearable.

Cloud clung and tore at him, his own name being sobbed down his throat as Sephiroth felt the pulsing of Cloud's cock against his stomach, then a gush of wet warmth.

Sephiroth's lower body froze suddenly still while his upper body trembled uncontrollably. Every single part of Cloud's body held onto him tight enough to make him gasp. The spasms seemed to last forever, and blue eyes watched, his fingers twirling through his hair, his legs loosening to gently rub against his hips and outer thighs.

Sephiroth didn't want to stop, but his slow thrusting became meaningless as he went soft, and Cloud's eyes began to blink slowly, sleepily.

He very reluctantly disengaged from Cloud, relishing the way little fingers clung to his hair, combing through the entire length as Sephiroth stepped off the bed and to the bathroom. He returned condomless and with a towel, which he used to quickly clean Cloud off.

"You missed a spot." Cloud pointed to his chest. Sephiroth made a swipe at it.

"Here, too." Cloud showed his elbow.

Sephiroth muttered, and swiped that area also.

"Here, too." Cloud rolled over onto his side and popped his ass out. Sephiroth gave it a firm smack which resonated most favorably, chuckling at the indignant screech that followed. He threw the towel across the room towards the general direction of the bathroom.

Cloud, in sleepy, relaxed movements that were more kitten-like than Sephiroth had ever seen a human perform, circled on his knees, looking for the end to the comforter. Once he found it, he burrowed underneath, and held it open for Sephiroth.

He got in with a smile and laid next to Cloud, their bodies warming up the winter-cool sheets in moments.

They faced each other on the pillow, and stared.

"How do you feel?" Cloud finally asked, sucking thoughtfully at his bottom lip.

Sephiroth breathed through his nose, and looked like he was thinking hard. Cloud was extraordinarily disappointed when he answered with the same question, "How do you feel?"

"Perfect. Wonderful. You're everything I could ever want." Cloud confessed passionately, if a little shakily, "..I love you."

Sephiroth closed his eyes, "Cloud. I feel more at ease with you than I ever have with anyone. In my life." He opened them back up, "I.. value you so much."

For a second, Cloud's heart stopped dead.

Then, his brain slowly.. carefully.. gingerly.. registered..

..value.

Value.

Value?..

Cloud forced a smile and turned over. He felt the strong arms circle him, the warm body press against the back of him. He felt the kisses and the breath in his hair.

Sephiroth heard the tears.

He hoped they were the happy kind

A/N

Two chapter images!

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-12-sidewalk-83862990

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-12-dressup-83863185

And this one was just kind of a goof, plz don't take it too SRSLY…. owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-chomp-ref-83863353

1- 1- Now we alll know what tripod means, lulz. Poor Cloud.

2- 2- I've been avoiding the whole top/bottom issue..just because I don't think it fits with Sephiroth and Cloud. Cloud has some very "seme" thoughts and actions, I think, from chapter 1. On the same wave, Sephiroth's appearance and some attitudes I see as "uke". But I can see their couplings naturally tending towards Sephiroth being dominant, but I don't think he would ever deny Cloud dominance if he really wanted it. Will I ever write ukeroth?.. maaaybe. You'll just have to wait and see. But I know some people hiss and spit at the mere suggestion, so I'll put up a warning if ever it's involved.

3- 3-Okay, I'd like to just take a moment and thank you people for reviewing so, so much. I love all the people that regularly review, absolutely look forward to what you have to say each new chapter. And you sexy fuckers who pop in randomly, it feels like a dirty little one night stand; yum. But in all honesty, I wanted to write an entertaining story, nothing more, nothing less. And I feel like I've done that, plus a little extra. So, just know that you're the reason I do this. Look at me, reviewers! It's all for you, reviewers! It's all for you!


	13. Singing in the Rain

Cloud opened his eyes and was looking into Sephiroth's. But upside down. 

He stared for a few moments before closing his eyes, then opening them again to try and make sense of it. The length of Sephiroth's body was pressed close behind him, but he was leaning all the way over Cloud so that his head was pressed upside down into the pillow, his silver hair spread across the bed like tinsel. 

"Mornin'." He drawled.

Cloud grinned widely and closed his eyes again. He went to shift, but found his limbs completely entangled with his bedmate's. Sephiroth moved right side up, disappearing behind Cloud, and unhooked a relaxation-heavy leg from around him to let him move. Cloud rolled over and curled up against Sephiroth, pressing his face into the warm, smooth skin of his neck. Under his lips he sensed Sephiroth's pulse beating softly through his veins, and kissed. Sephiroth turned his face and returned the kiss between Clouds eyes.

Love.. was Cloud's first happy, coherent thought before he felt his brain bloom into wakefulness with horror.

Absolute horror.

"Wanna take a shower?" Sephiroth suggested with fingertips tracing languidly up and down Cloud's arm.

He swallowed, "…Sure. Yeah."

Sephiroth kissed Cloud's hair and then threw his legs over the edge of the bed with a sigh, "Gimme like two minutes first."

Cloud furrowed his brow, "Huh?"

"I gotta mail a package." Sephiroth rose out of bed with a stretch, making himself impossibly long, then shot a playful glance over his shoulder, "…But you can come watch if you're into that."

Cloud gave a snort and burrowed farther down into the covers as Sephiroth's lovely, naked ass disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door, kindly leaving Cloud alone to fully chew and digest his utter and absolute misery.

He grimaced bitterly in the sudden coldness of the room, thinking a million things at once. The one most prominent thought of all was : Why does love have to be such a big goddamn deal?

Last night Sephiroth had run big, strong hands all over his body. Kissed him. Held him. He had the chance to look up into green, pleasure clouded eyes. Feel Sephiroth's body in a way that nobody had ever felt it before. He got to wake up next to him.

So, couldn't that be enough?

Cloud could almost envision it; the gathering of his clothes, the hardwood under his bare feet as he walked to the couch to put his shoes on. He could see Sephiroth heading into the kitchen as he tied them, then coming with a cup of coffee, giving him a small, friendly peck goodbye as he made his exit. He could see the door close and hear the lock from the outside. Cloud could just about see himself waiting at the train station, getting some coffee of his own for the ride back home. Entering his room, unpacking, and showering this experience, this obsession, this love off of him.

Cloud recalled the expression Sephiroth wore when he had spoken the dreaded 'L' word. He had never seen a face be so blank, and so clashed at the same time. What could he possibly have been thinking inside his precious head? The closest estimation Cloud could make was that... perhaps Sephiroth felt a bit sorry for him.

Cloud's cheeks tinged sadly as his face sank into the side of the pillow Sephiroth had slept on. His nose was filled with the warm, sweet scent of Sephiroth's hair, while his head filled with even sweeter memories of the previous night. Kisses, cuddles, body heat. Hands, fingers, lips. The most incredible, indescribable wholeness he'd ever felt before. He recalled Sephiroth's hand clasped tightly, reassuringly, protectively against his neck, his thumb stroking his lips. Cloud then recalled the taste of that thumb. And of Sephiroth's sweat. And how he pushed into his body like he'd never stop, never have enough.

Why!? Why did Cloud have to ruin what was a beautiful, perfect first fuck? Why couldn't he just let well enough alone? Just let it be a fuck?

Because it was not just a fuck.

He cares, probably... Cloud decided ...He just doesn't love me. That's all.

His entire life Cloud had been overly prone to crying, and he had done it so much and so often that he knew the nature of his own tear glands in a way that few people ever really did. He cried now like a person wrings out a towel, hasty and unfeeling, pushing the wetness out all at once so it didn't trickle out slowly. There was so much palpable, liquid sadness in his skull that it almost alarmed him. He felt like there would be no end to how many tears he could cry at the simple truth that Sephiroth did not love him.

Sephiroth vaaalued him.

Cloud made a face of distaste behind his tears. Oh, he had a fucking hatred for that word this morning. Value. It sounded cheap, and it made Cloud feel cheap. 

I guess I am sort of cheap... he thought to himself, and despite the rocky state of his emotions, he cracked a smile into the pillow.

A flush, and the bathroom door opened slightly. "Safe now," Sephiroth called, then made a loud noise of shivery discomfort, "Watch out, the floor's fuckin' cold. Run." And then his shadow disappeared again into the light of the bathroom.

Watery blue eyes blinked from the nest of pillows and blankets.

Cloud had to love him. The man was as sweet as fucking sugar. He really, really was. Cloud couldn't not love him. So, was it really so terrible to be... valued by this man? To be anything to him?

He would take anything. If it was just a fuck, he'd take it. If Sephiroth had confessed to loving him, he'd take it that too, as much as he could get. If Sephiroth kicked him out right now without explanation or cause, he'd obey, then spend the rest of his life trying to get back into this bed.

The fact that Sephiroth valued him didn't make Cloud feel cheap. Not his intense, unrequited love, either.

Complete and total emotional slavery. That's what made Cloud feel cheap.

He then heard water rush through the pipes high up above on the ceiling, and a thought occurred to him. Sephiroth was, at this very moment naked and wet and had extended an invitation to the show. Cloud felt a tiny burst of positive energy blip in the bleakness of his mood like a drop of white ink. He almost smiled as he rolled, finding the edge of the bed and standing. He stretched up a little to crack his back, wincing at a tiny ache in the most obvious place, then shyly wandered to the slightly ajar bathroom door. 

He pushed it open with his fingertips, appreciating its smooth, well oiled hinges. He then quickly closed it behind him with a soft click. Stepping quietly up to the tub, he put one finger to the curtain and parted it, peeking in.

Cloud felt like his eyes must have popped out as they took in the heavenly sight that Sephiroth made standing with his eyes closed under the shower head, his hands running through his wet silver hair, trickles of water cascading down his body. His creamy skin made a mockery of the fluorescent bathroom light, the sort of light which prided itself on enhancing imperfections.

Sephiroth didn't have any.

Cloud batted his eyes and then glanced down at himself, keenly aware of the myriad of blotches, bruises, scars, cuts, scrapes, and other unsightly detours on the map of his own skin. He was certain Sephiroth saw nothing when he looked at him but his flaws. Cowlicks, knobby knees, no abs, and cheeks prone to turning that goddamned shade of pink.

What's to love? The voice in his mind wondered cruelly.

"You're lettin' in the cold." Sephiroth's rumbling morning voice complained.

The pink shade deepened as Sephiroth opened one eye to look at the blonde peeping tom and shot him a grin. Cloud stomped quickly into the tub and then shut the curtain, holding it to the wall to avoid letting in any cooler, unwanted temperatures.

He turned around, prepared to stand and wait until Sephiroth was done with the water, but wet hands caught his. Cloud was pulled until his feet were between Sephiroth's and his body pressed against the warmth and wetness he was covered in. Goosebumps ran along Cloud's skin as he was coaxed slowly under the stream of hot water.

For the love of God, he felt so terribly shy standing there naked with Sephiroth. A sort of deep shyness that hadn't touched him in a long time, and he had not been expecting to be touched by it again, all things considered. But his face turned the dial from bitch boy pink to blood red in five seconds. Sephiroth ran hands up and down his back, clashing further his feelings of virginal shyness, the knife depression had in his back, and now the cruel tease of arousal.

Sephiroth tipped Cloud's head back under the stream, brushing all of his hair off of his face, watching his long throat swallow.

"Did you just cry?"

"No," Cloud lied.

Sephiroth smoothed his thumbs slowly under Cloud's eyes, staring at him with a question on his face, and then ran his hands up into Cloud's wet hair, "How does this happen?" 

Cloud assumed he was referring to the fact that when wet, his hair turned into a dark honey colored bob. He just shrugged and smiled, then reached up to push back the fringe plastered to the sides of Sephiroth's face, slicking it back so there was nothing at all to for him to hide behind either.

Cloud giggled softly at a new discovery this enabled, "Seeeph.. You have such big, cute ears.."

Sephiroth's face went blank, then turned to dry disbelief.

Cloud put his hands over both of them and gently tugged, "Cute..."

Sephiroth snorted and turned, taking a bottle of shampoo and squirting a dollop on top of Cloud's head. His mood feeling lighter, he smiled and began to scratch it through his hair, sliding past Sephiroth to take a better look at his shower supplies. He scanned the bottles and containers for something cookie scented, but alas, they were all completely normal, masculine, boring items.

Cloud turned back to catch Sephiroth, in a movement that was quick and practiced, twist his hair into a long, wet rope. He watched him take a handful of shampoo and slick it around the rope in two or three long motions of his arms.

"Please don't ever cut that," Cloud sighed, rinsing the shampoo off of his head.

"I've truly considered choppin' it all off a few times..." Sephiroth muttered as he worked another handful of shampoo into his scalp.

Cloud chuckled, "Noo! You're not allowed to."

"Aww, you wouldn't love me anymore?" Sephiroth asked playfully, dunking his head under the water for a rinse.

Cloud stared up at him, unsure of how to respond to that. So, he just opted to gawk in shock with his mouth hanging open. 

Sephiroth paused, wiping the water off of his face, "...What?"

"...Nothing." Cloud said deeply, slowly.

He could almost see the gears in Sephiroth's mind turning, the mental chewing of information. He reached for the conditioner and helped himself to a handful, then held it out to Cloud.

Cloud looked at it for a moment before holding out his palm. Sephiroth gave him the recommended dime sized amount, then clicked it closed.

Noise was a constant in their experience of each other. Cloud more so at the strange start of things, but Sephiroth's volume had turned up considerably. Breathing, laughing, speaking, sighing, grumbling, humming, bitching, drumming. Silence usually meant that Cloud was doing homework in the dorm hallway and Sephiroth had fallen asleep on the other line, or apparently, that someone was upset. Not looking at each other, they began to condition. Something began to turn and turn in the air between them, tightening.

Cloud stood totally still as he rubbed the conditioner into his hair, taking way too long and thinking way too much about it. Sephiroth seemed to be especially painstakingly careful in working it into the ends of his rope of wet, shiny silver.

When he couldn't imagine another inch of his head that wasn't thoroughly conditioned, Cloud decided rinsing was now appropriate. He moved into the water stream next to Sephiroth.

It wasn't that he made a conscious effort to not touch the man, but it happened that way. He stood straight, bowed out and arched to leave a space between them.

Sephiroth touched the back of Cloud's shoulder and he moved slightly to make room.

He touched Cloud again, and again he moved.

The solid touch of a full palm replaced the fleeting brushes, and Cloud looked up to find Sephiroth almost pouting. Just almost. 

He finally mumbled something that sounded like, "What s'matter?"

"Nothing," Cloud said again, full of acid and obvious sarcasm. The sound of it surprised even him, and he was immediately regretful. 

Sephiroth stared at him, chewing the side of his mouth for a moment before turning into the water, continuing his rinsing. Cloud stood awkwardly, completely baffled at being turned away from, before squeezing past Sephiroth to stand under his runoff, looking up into his confused, agitated green eyes.

After a few moments, Sephiroth finally asked, "Why did you cry?"

"I..." Cloud found his voice wavering in the middle of his lie, so he made a new one, "... I don't know."

"Why are you lyin' to me?" Sephiroth asked with such a degree of innocence that Cloud felt his chest almost heave with nausea. Sephiroth hadn't meant to be an asshole with the 'you wouldn't love me anymore' comment… he was just playing, flirting, as usual. Cloud wanted an eject button from this situation, he wanted to rewind, he wanted to just cut off the part of his brain that was fucking everything up so things could be good again.

He closed his eyes, "... Because I don't know how to say why."

"Find a way."

"Please, Seph. I don't want to. Don't be mad…"

"I'm not. Or I wasn't. I don't know what's goin' on."

Cloud frowned up at him, "... I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Sephiroth said lowly, and took a step back with Cloud to get them out of the spray of water, "...just tell me what I did that was so fuckin' god awful."

As he tried to think of some wording, something to dig himself out of this hole, anything at all, the only sound was the rushing water. Sephiroth didn't move, he just looked down at Cloud with eyes that for their color and composition should have been cold, but were filled with only concern and warmth. Cloud decided to just open his mouth and speak, "Sometimes I get... sad."

"Sad?" Sephiroth became a being of motion and noise at that. "Why?"

"I really don't know. It's just that something, or maybe nothing sets off this..." Cloud made a spidery finger motion, "... inner yuck. Like, I could be with you, at an Anal Orgasm concert in the fucking sunshine and I could just become miserable with everything. It doesn't happen that much anymore. Maybe because I'm getting older... or just too fucking busy to notice. And dammit Sephiroth, I'm so happy to be with you. It's just that last night, I... got sad. Over something stupid. It was stupid."

After a few moments of consideration, Sephiroth said, "If it was stupid, just tell me."

Cloud opened his mouth, then closed it. He wished he could make him understand everything without words, because the only ones he could think to say were terribly wrong.

Sephiroth saw the inner struggle on his face and softened further, touching Cloud's shoulders and neck, "Baby... did I hurt you? Did I do something' wrong..?"

Cloud's heart broke, "No! Seph! God, you were so perfect! Everything you did was."

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. "Just spit it out." 

The words fell out of Cloud's mouth, "You don't love me."

Sephiroth's eyebrows shot up, "Cloud..."

Cloud hid his face in his hands and visibly shrank an inch, "I'm sorry! Please, I'm sorry. Please. Forget it." 

"Baby..."

"Please, Seph.. please don't respond to what I just said. Please. Please..." Cloud whispered miserably, "...you don't have to."

Sephiroth's fingers gently tried to curl underneath Cloud's and remove them from hiding his face, "I never said I didn't."

Cloud growled behind his hands, "You don't have to say anything! Please! It's okay!"

"Look at me, baby."

"No..."

"Cloud."

"No!"

And then, Cloud was an inch from Sephiroth's face with his wrists pinned to the wall.

After a perfect moment of senseless shock passed over him, Cloud's heart hammered at his chest like it wanted to be let out. Partly from the conversation, from his racing emotions, from total jarring shock at the ease and speed with which Sephiroth had rendered him completely and totally vulnerable. He couldn't look at him, the humiliation was too much. The only safe place he had was behind his eyelids.

He heard Sephiroth's voice, "You said you love me. And I said I value you. Doesn't that mean the same thing?"

"I don't know. I... don't think so."

Sephiroth flattened Cloud's hands to the wall and laced their fingers, "...Open your eyes."

"No," Cloud said with just a touch of indignancey.

A tiny smile wormed its way to Sephiroth's voice, "Brat. You don't know how I feel for you by now?"

"No, I do know. I know..."

"Cloud..?"

He opened his eyes looked up at Sephiroth, who smiled softly, "I think I know a little bit about how your head works by now."

Sephiroth's eyes burned into his, and there was enough of a pause for Cloud to wonder if there was more to that statement. Just when he began to construct something intelligible to respond with, Sephiroth continued, "…Here's the deal. If I tell you what you wanna hear, right now... you're gonna wonder if it's because I know you wanna hear it. So I'm not gonna say it to you. Not right now... but you gotta know that you're the best thing in my life."

Cloud stared up at him in bewilderment for a few moments. Bewilderment because he still hadn't gotten what he wanted, but had just been given everything he needed.

The eject button. Sephiroth had it, and he knew just how to use it. And much like before, his sadness was wiped out entirely, and what was left behind was a thick mix of humility and admiration. Cloud wore the emotions on his face as his mouth moved between a small, shy smile and wider one of barely suppressed joy. 

Sephiroth let go of Cloud's hands, but he followed along, willingly trapping himself, and in turn, trapping Sephiroth.

Sephiroth took what he gave, "...You know what I wonder sometimes?"

Cloud shook his head, too enamored to speak.

"You get out of class everyday at 4. And you call me everyday at 5, always on the dot. I wonder sometimes what you do in that hour. I wonder if maybe you just wanna lay down for a while. Maybe you finish up some kinda homework, or maybe you talk to your friends. But I wonder if the real reason you call at 5 is because you don't want me to assume you have nothin' else to do. Am I way off base with this?"

Totally vulnerable again, but this time it was different. It was okay. He felt no urge to lie, and quietly, slowly confessed, "...I wait by the phone until 5."

Green eyes narrowed slightly. "Just call me, baby. I'm waitin' for you to."

Cloud made a large noise that was music to Sephiroth's ears, and he reached up and threw his arms around his neck. Sephiroth returned the embrace, holding Cloud against him.

Neither had brushed, but neither much cared as they sought each other's lips out. Their tongues mixed with the taste of warm water, caressing and apologizing to each other for things they didn't fully understand. Sephiroth didn't know how deeply Cloud ached to be told he was needed, wanted, and loved. And Cloud couldn't possibly have known how terrified Sephiroth was of being ignored, lied to, and abandoned. They didn't know how catastrophically they had shaken each other during a mere 10 minute lover's quarrel in the shower.

What they understood perfectly though, was that they were both okay now.

The kiss came apart, both set of lips drifting to other locations, Sephiroth's upwards to Cloud's forehead, Cloud's sideways to Sephiroth's ear. 

"I love you, Seph."

Sephiroth absolutely ached to return the words. As before, something inside held him back, as though it would feel strange coming from his mouth. What felt natural to him was to soak in the warmth of the pretty words, pick Cloud up, and squeeze him to the point of mild discomfort.

Cloud didn't expect words, and felt no lack or want for anything at all. He hugged his beloved back, and breathed the moisture of his skin. Even though Cloud didn't have the arm size or strength to match him, Sephiroth's eyes fluttered closed at the feel of the small male clinging to him with everything he could muster.

After a few long moments passed, Sephiroth loosened his hold on Cloud and lowered him to his feet. Cloud solidified and stood straight, giving his face a wipe and his hair a firm slick back. He looked behind Sephiroth, then slipped around him with distinct purpose.

Taking up the boyish body wash, Cloud made a tiny lather in his hands, looking up at Sephiroth with a smile that enchanted him with its unusual mixture of shyness and suggestion. Sephiroth smiled back, and made himself available. Cloud moved forward and let his soapy fingertips rain down Sephiroth's torso.

Sephiroth jerked and snorted, "Don't tickle."

"I want to, though..." Cloud giggled, making his hands flat and applying more pressure to alleviate the sensitivity. "Your stomach is ridiculous, you know."

Like a true show off, Sephiroth sucked in, and it somehow became even more tight and defined. Cloud tsked and rolled his eyes, and veered away from that area entirely. He moved his hands up Sephiroth's chest, shoulders, and down around to his back, spreading trails of little bubbles in his wake. This put Cloud close to him, and the washing turned into more of another extended embrace as his hands went up sharp shoulder blades, between, then down over his rounded ass to just beneath, where the length of Cloud's arms prevented him from going down farther. Instead he ran his hands around to the front of the long thighs before him, where they hesitated momentarily.

Sephiroth looked quite content to be washed to the fullest extent. So, Cloud slipped a sudsy hand between his legs.

Sephiroth's cock was big, but he was a grower, not a shower. In its soft, casual state, it was compact, perhaps even a bit unremarkable in size. The presentation was gorgeous however, with the delightful cushion of soft, bright silver fuzziness surrounding it and reaching halfway up to his bellybutton, almost unnoticeable unless in certain lighting or at certain – ahem, distances.

Cloud's eyes were glued to the entire situation as he gently moved his palm underneath Sephiroth's balls, cupping and feeling for a moment before letting them fall from his fingertips, then wrapping his fingers around the already stiffening shaft. TheThe\Now without a single intelligent thought in his head, Cloud pulled the thickening cock with a slow twist, feeling his own swell against Sephiroth's slick thigh. There was an attention-requesting cough emitted from Sephiroth's throat that pulled Cloud up from his hypnosis. He quickly retracted his hands and looked up to hear Sephiroth's opinion of being molested in his own shower. 

Amused green eyes stared down as Sephiroth reached for the body wash and made a lather of his own. Cloud looked down and watched Sephiroth's hands on his chest and stomach spread wide, covering the span of him almost entirely. His fingers dug into his muscles, raking them slowly, causing Cloud to moan softly and Sephiroth to smile. The treatment traveled up to his shoulders and down his arms, where both soapy hands took one of Clouds, putting suds in between every finger.

"So, you know I gotta ask..." Sephiroth murmured, drawing Cloud up from a heavy lidded, relaxed place. "How was it?"

He tilted his head with a sigh as Sephiroth made deep, heavy strokes up his wrists and palms with his thumbs. "... Even better than I thought."

"You thought it might be bad?" Sephiroth let go of Cloud's hand and took up the other, the fresh sensations causing Cloud to bite his lip.

"I was scared a little. But… it felt good."

"Good enough to repeat sometime?"

Cloud laughed a little through his nose, "Hell yeah."

"Good... because the whole time I was thinkin' ...there's no way Cloud's gonna let me pull this bullshit again."

Cloud giggled, "Ohh, so that's why you were like the energizer bunny!"

"I wish... I'd prolly still be fuckin' you right now."

"Seph, do you... want to..?"

Sephiroth's eyes widened in surprise and his lips parted slightly, a sight that amused and elated Cloud to no end. Then, handsome features quickly composed and melted down into a more appropriate leer.

"So soon?" Sephiroth asked softly despite the fire lit behind his eyes.

Cloud answered on his tip toes, pressing and folding his lips with Sephiroth's in decisiveness. The whole slipperiness of the situation enabled the sloppiest kiss they had yet shared. Cloud took the chance to devour Sephiroth, sucking and licking his lips and face with no consideration of propriety, shame, nor cleanup. They both felt the desire to be messy, haphazard, and a bit needy, for they had just experienced a tiff. Feelings had been hurt, problems shucked, and now the wounds had to be licked.

Cloud let out a small cry of surprise and sudden desperation as Sephiroth scooped him up and again held him against the wall, this time wringing shudders of desire rather than anxiety. Cloud leaned against the wall, locking his hands behind Sephiroth's neck and his ankles loosely behind his back as he kneaded and cradled his ass, rubbing their already aching erections together with an edge of impatience.

He felt Sephiroth's fingers, slicked by water and perhaps something more, carefully push into him. A heavy rush of jarring pain made him tremble, then fret a little inwardly. This had felt good the night before... hadn't it? He gritted his teeth as the fingers pushed further inside, twisting a little. Just when they were both about to become discouraged, Cloud suddenly cried out and bucked his hips, just about getting dropped on his ass in the process.

Sephiroth bounced Cloud in his arms to get a better grip on him, and continued to very gently explore the fun little spot inside him. The General had spent a little bit of time 'studying up'; he would never do something to Cloud without first trying it on himself. 

"Seph..." Cloud panted, grabbing for Sephiroth's very manly bathing products, knocking a few loudly down onto the tub floor before gripping hold of a bottle that felt like shampoo. Almost wild, he popped it open, squeezed some out onto his palm and grabbed a hold of Sephiroth's cock, caressing as he coated it slick.

Sephiroth moaned in his throat, "Lemme go grab a – "

"No!" Cloud tightened his limbs around Sephiroth, "…I don't want one."

Sephiroth was stunned by the blondie for the umpteenth time this morning. "...Are you sure?"

"Yeah – " Cloud gasped and cut off his own sentence with a needy groan.

Sephiroth smiled a little, "...Positive?"

"Yes..." Cloud gritted, restlessly writhing in Sephiroth's when his fingers were slid out, and the tip of his slick cock kissed the opening.

"...You were fairly insistent about it last night..."

Cloud had gone full circle past feral and now spoke in a strained, yet articulate whisper, "I just wanna feel what it's like... you inside me... coming.."

Sephiroth had already started to ease into him, and Cloud licked his lips in concentration, the feeling not yet familiar, but known. Just when he thought that Sephiroth couldn't possibly get deeper, that his body couldn't possibly open wide enough to accommodate his thickness, their hips met, and Sephiroth stopped. 

"Look," he urged gently.

Cloud's eyes drifted down the muscles and lines of Sephiroth's stomach to where they were now connected. He found his own throbbing erection, and beyond it Sephiroth's hips slanted and pointed towards his.

The sight was breathtaking in and of itself, but then Sephiroth arched his back to pull his groin away slowly. Cloud watched with fascination as the base of Sephiroth's cock appeared, inching out. The tiny opening hugged it, lapping out in a wet, pink ring around the blushed complexion of Sephiroth's length. Cloud gasped.

"I wanted you to see last night," Sephiroth told him softly, "…Isn't that fuckin' beautiful?"

He ripped his blue eyes away and closed them for fear of exploding on the spot if he looked at either Sephiroth, or the erotic display their bodies created. Sephiroth's lips touched his, seeming to understand but not letting Cloud hide entirely.

He felt a slow, languid pace begin and become regular, and his composure stabilized enough to open his eyes and look. Last night it had been almost pitch dark, except for the green glow coming in from the windows. And his focus had been more inward, paying more attention to how Sephiroth was making him feel versus how he looked while he was doing it. He was dying to see how Sephiroth moved, how he looked while he made love in the light.

Cloud drank in the vision before him. Sephiroth curved his hips up and into Cloud in a way that was beyond all comprehensions of sexy, rolling along with a rhythm that he made up out of air, just seeming to know what was needed.

Cloud tore a page from Sephiroth's book, "Goddamn, Seph..."

Sephiroth smiled widely and proved that his sensual moves were indeed natural, for when he actually made an effort to be visually stimulating... rolling his hips slowly... allowing his muscles to flex... digging his fingers further into Cloud's ass... Poor Cloud was so profoundly affected that he threw his head back and slammed it right into the shower wall. 

He squinted one eye and dumbly droned, "…Ow."

And while he was almost grateful for the brief starburst behind his eyes and moment of painful distraction, Sephiroth took his head, cradling it and kissing his forehead.

"Careful, baby..." he said, all pretensions of sex gone from his voice as he stilled, allowing Cloud a moment to recover.

Cloud didn't need it. He continued the tiny thrusts and nudges that he had been using to meet Sephiroth, only now working alone. Sephiroth watched this new display, supporting his weight entirely while he found himself being climbed and clawed at like a rope in gym class. The sight of him, the feel of him, the sounds of his whimpered, but insistent moans…

"Cloud... show me how you like it," Sephiroth hissed, all concussions forgotten about. "Show me how to fuck you."

Cloud mewed in desperation, and although he was certain he was going to be teased later, his mouth burst with a sudden cry of, "Hard!"

Sephiroth's lips lifted into a smile that looked in no mood to tease, and in half a second he hooked his arms up underneath Cloud's knees and began to thrust up into him at an angle that had Cloud absolutely vicious in his arms. Sephiroth wasn't careless however, he knew he had to keep it fairly gentle, but he quickened the pace to excite Cloud, watching as he hissed and cried out with every deep stroke. He had no leverage to throw himself back at Sephiroth, he hooked his arms around his neck and kissed him with all the pent up need that he had.

Cloud's hands went in separate directions, one to the ache between his legs, while the other five fingers tangled into the thick, wet silver hair, attempting to comb through as he was accustomed to. But instead, his fingers caught on small tangles of semi-dry hair and unintentionally pulled. Sephiroth found himself not only not minding, but tilting his head to feel more of the soft tugging, groaning into the mouth of the beautiful, sexually electric creature in his arms.

Sephiroth felt himself rushing up to the edge, then backing off, then rushing forward full speed, then having to pause to back off again, until he could no longer call on any outside help. Cloud was surrounding him too tight, too wet, the sound of his name being cried out, punctuated by the wet smack of their bodies, too delicious to be ignored.

Cloud always thought that an orgasm was the pinnacle of sex; the point. But as he watched Sephiroth watch him, he thought that this was the point. The drowning out of the rest of the world, the narrowing of existence to just them, and turning the volume on their passion up to fucking blare it. He licked his lips and stared Sephiroth down in pleasure, the luminous burn of his green eyes inhuman as the cat slit narrowed to almost nothing, moving away from Cloud's blue gaze to something on top of his head.

Parts of Cloud's hair were beginning to air dry. Sephiroth noticed with a lustful sort of awe that his telltale spikes were clumping together, slowly and almost supernaturally beginning to lift by the root, the feathery texture bouncing in time with Sephiroth's thrusts. Something about all that was so fucking sexy that Sephiroth's cock jumped, and he emitted a brief sound that was suspiciously whimper-like in quality and tone. He growled, cutting off the noise abruptly.

He didn't mean to command Cloud...

…but he did, "Come, baby. Now."

Cloud wrung himself twice more before shattering in Sephiroth's arms, crying out his name and spilling himself across Sephiroth's stomach.

Sephiroth dug his fingers into Cloud's cheeks as he pounded out his own climax for a few brutal moments, then stilled himself save for the trembling of his knees. They both gently finalized their releases, Cloud milking himself slowly, Sephiroth letting himself jerk and spasm inside his little blonde lover.

They panted in each other's arms before Sephiroth loosened his hold on one of Cloud's legs, and it found the floor of the tub. He then let Cloud slide down to his feet, where he immediately went on tip toes to catch Sephiroth's lips in a sweet kiss.

Cloud then gave the sort of sigh one makes when reaching the summit of Mt. Nibelheim.

Sephiroth echoed the sentiment, giving himself a rinse of the various liquids he was now covered in. Cloud watched him wipe at the mess on his abs with a slightly smug smile before feeling a hot warmth slowly run down his inner thigh.

"Mom's gonna kill me."

Sephiroth knitted his eyebrows at this, "Why?"

Cloud pouted in thought, and then slowly shrugged one shoulder, "...I guess it doesn't really matter... as long as we're together, right?" And then a downright cheery smile broke out onto his face, "Besides! I like it much better without one!"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes when he realized they were talking about ridiculous condoms. He'd heard all about the drug store sex education story, and while he applauded Mrs. Strife on not giving Cloud a whole old-fashioned disappointment schpeal, he had to question her taste in products. Pleasureglide?

"Oh, who gives a shit if we use a condom or not?"

"Not me!" Cloud chirped, then turned his back to the water, bent over slightly and spread his cheeks, happily rinsing his ass out.

Sephiroth bit his lower lip before roaring in crude laughter at the sight. 

"What the hell else am I supposed to do?" Cloud shrieked indignantly, still bent into the stream, "Slide around all day?"

Sephiroth snorted and fell against the wall in his delight, and it warmed Cloud's heart, even if it was at his own ass-rinsing expense. Sephiroth had a lot of different laughs, and Cloud definitely liked this one the best. It was the most unhinged, hysterical, and absolutely handsome noise he had ever heard.

Once satisfied with the cleanliness of his rectal zone, Cloud gave himself a little once- over rinse and then moved aside to let Sephiroth shut off the faucet. Instead of taking the little route Cloud had offered him, he flirtatiously pressed and leaned against him, reaching out to push the dial in.

Cloud then let himself be led out of the tub. He let Sephiroth go to retrieve towels from under the sink, staying on the bath mat. He didn't want to let on that he knew the location of every item in Sephiroth's bathroom, thus revealing that he was a complete snoop.

Sephiroth threw a towel on Cloud's head, and he shook it carelessly through his hair as Sephiroth wrapped his own around his hips. He seemed to be casual and relaxed, not trying to put on a show, which led Cloud to believe that every morning after his shower, he could be found looking like a wet, beautiful fucking mythological merman with a towel slung perfectly low on his body. It was preposterous. It was ridiculous. And Cloud wanted to be there to catch it every morning.

"What do you wanna do today?" Sephiroth asked, opening his mirror and making no secret of its contents. Although he had already explored it, seeing the rows of prescriptives made Cloud flush slightly, and he focused on drying himself.

"I dunno. If I was alone I'd probably just sleep all day..." Cloud chuckled, although it was slightly humorless, "...but um... what do you wanna do?"

"Not much," Sephiroth sighed, popping open bottle after bottle and making a large, multicolored pile on the edge of the sink, "I'm fuckin' lazy. I'd be fine with sleepin' with you all day. But tell me if there's somethin' you wanna do."

It came out more serious sounding than Cloud intended it to be, "I've got everything I need."

He caught the glow of Sephiroth's warm smile in the mirror before he swiped the collection of capsules into his palm and threw the entire mess back, swallowing with almost no effort. He tilted his head to the side for a moment, then reached for his toothbrush, helping himself to a huge turd of toothpaste.

"Wait!" Cloud gasped and rushed past him, wrapping and tucking the towel around his chest in the sudden temperature change of the room, and for the fact that he was flitting past those enormous windows. He retrieved his toothbrush, and then galloped back beside Sephiroth at the sink. He took a little squirt of paste for himself and began to brush alongside Sephiroth, who smiled down at him around his red toothbrush.

Little did Sephiroth know, he had just fulfilled a very odd, but very important dream for Cloud.

When they were finishing up and Cloud spat out the blue-green residue, Sephiroth smiled slyly, "Not used to seein' you spit..."

Cloud didn't reply, only reached out, pushed a single finger under the loose knot of Sephiroth's towel, smiling in victory as it unraveled and fell to the floor. Sephiroth was amazed to find that his desire for Cloud was already sparking again. What sort of depravity would finally satisfy his carnal cravings for the blonde? Maybe it would never be satisfied, a notion that Sephiroth found both comforting and somewhat confusing.

But instead of dwelling on that shit, he threw up the back of Cloud's makeshift towel dress and gave his cute little ass a squeeze.

Cloud winced in real pain, but then folded it over with an uncharacteristic look of annoyance. "Heey."

"…You hurt there?" Sephiroth asked seriously.

"Just a little," Cloud assured flippantly. In actuality, his ass was a throbbing ache. Last night wouldn't have been so bad in and of itself, but an encore so soon… while well worth it in Cloud's opinion, the universe was obviously punishing him.

"Lemme cure it?" Sephiroth offered gently, brushing his fingertips gently over the rounded surface, letting them fall into the crevice.

Cloud smiled and rested his elbows on the sink, popping it up. "...You going to kiss it?"

Sephiroth grinned and gave it a sharp smack instead. Cloud bellowed dramatically, but the thwack echoing around the bathroom lasted longer than the split second sting. Then he was as good as new.

Cloud straightened up quickly and with his tongue half out of his mouth, raised his hand for some payback, but then stopped himself. As much murder as Sephiroth let him get away with, he couldn't see striking the General. And with his hand held back for one huge baseball pitch of a spank, he felt himself go sheepishly flaccid.

Sephiroth only grinned and leaned his palms on the counter, "Do your worst, little man."

…Little man?!

Cloud snapped it back and let it fly. When his hand made impact onto Sephiroth's perfect white ass, he immediately retracted it, blowing on his stinging palm with a wince. He then gauged Sephiroth, who hadn't moved.

A silver eyebrow drifted up slowly, "...Maybe it a couple years."

Cloud's face fell. Not even a handprint!

Sephiroth shrugged a shoulder and offered, "Well... I felt it?"

Cloud crossed his arms in secret evil plotting. He wasn't one for spanking, anyways, that was Sephiroth's department obviously. But, one day. He imagined for the millionth time biting down onto the luminescent cheek of Sephiroth's chewy, delicious ass. One day. 

Cloud followed Sephiroth out into his bedroom. "What are you wearing today..?" he asked, wanting to tear open the hinges of the closet that was still unexplored.

"Nothin'." Sephiroth smiled, walking out into the middle of the room.

Cloud squeaked, "Seph! Seeeph! You're walking right in fucking front of those windows!"

Sephiroth stopped and smiled wider, motioning casually to the floor to ceiling panes, "Those windows?"

Cloud's mouth fell open, "You're an exhibitionist!"

Sephiroth glanced over his shoulder, "This block is used to it."

Cloud gasped loudly, partially in shock at Sephiroth's behavior, and partially because... that beautifully chiseled body was his only to gawk at and possibly take tabloid pictures of!

"Nooo! Get away!" Cloud waved, hiding in a safe spot near the bathroom.

Sephiroth then laughed loudly, "My bare ass would be on t-shirts by now, baby. Don't worry, you can see out, but not in."

Cloud let that sink in, and then exhaled in relief and trotted out into the room, passing Sephiroth and going to his bag, "Thank Christ Almighty. Although... I'd probably buy one of those t-shirts."

Cloud pulled on his black jeans. Sephiroth watched in wonder at how he fit and filled such a tiny, unimpressive garment. Once zipped, they seemed to suddenly be electrified to life, hugging his narrow hips and long legs. He then pulled a simple tight white t-shirt over his head, a small, cheap thing, almost see-through and surely years old. Sephiroth truly wondered if Cloud knew how drop dead gorgeous he was.

Cloud turned and said something that Sephiroth wasn't prepared to listen to. He said it with a smile, then his nose turned pink, he scrunched one shoulder and stuffed his hands in his back pockets.

"I didn't catch that, what?" Sephiroth said after a moment, blinking softly.

Cloud rolled his eyes and made an unidentifiable, high pitched clicky noise, "I saaaid: can I dress you today?"

"What is it with you and dressing me?"

Cloud rushed towards him with open arms, "It's fun!"

Sephiroth caught him and took his face for a quick kiss, "Go for it, then. Just don't put me in work clothes."

No skin-tight black leather? Too bad.

Cloud squealed anyways and ran towards the closed door that was not the entrance. "This is your closet, right?"

He opened the door before Sephiroth could affirm, and found a walk-in; three walls of black garments. One seemed to be deemed for his work uniforms. Cloud reached out and touched one of the hanging coats, it seeming much more like a leather coat on the hanger and much less like a tight black coating of sexiness. He then went to a rack of more casual clothes, spotting a few items that he had seen Sephiroth in, along with other, related types of things. Sephiroth wasn't showy, his style was simple and cozy. He seemed to like soft, dark fabric, plain shirts, and fitted pants.

Fine with me, Cloud thought with a sigh, checking out labels. More Marc by Marc Jacobs, Missoni, Diesel, Armani, Louis Vuitton...

"Label whore," Cloud muttered over his shoulder as Sephiroth hung through the door frame and watched with a relaxed smile as his closet was sifted through.

"Not really. They just sort of… give shit to me."

Cloud shot a look of pure poison, "Tell them to send some smalls next time."

Sephiroth smiled and brought his arms down to wrap around Cloud's shoulders, "Hey. You might like this." He dug through the rack and then pulled out the sort of shirt that was sewn from wet dreams. It was black, long sleeve with rusty red patches on the elbows, with a white dress shirt details poking from the collar and sleeves. Then Sephiroth turned it around to reveal that the back was vintage-y screen printed with an ancient Wutian painting of a Masamune.

Cloud took the shirt from Sephiroth and discovered that it was Vivienne fucking Westwood.

"Vivienne made this for you?!"

"I thought it was sweet. But why would I wear this? …Seriously, why?"

"Because it's awesome?"

Sephiroth pushed it into his hands, "Then take it."

Cloud took the one of a kind garment and reverently bellowed, "It's fucking priceless!"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes, "It's a fuckin' shirt. Put it on."

Cloud pulled it over his head like a bomb, and it fell down around him, hitting the top of his thighs and hugging his form only slightly. Sephiroth nodded in approval, then began to dig out piece after unwanted designer piece.

"Too tight. Too short. Too... weird. Don't want this. Won't ever wear this. I can't wear green."

Cloud caught them all like raindrops in his mouth, "I can have these?"

"Take 'em if you like 'em."

Cloud began to examine the goods, "Why can't you wear green, again? It'd make your eyes go boom."

"My eyes don't need more boom. I can't wear any color."

"Why? Got an image to uphold?" Cloud cooed, thumbing through the rest of the glorious wardrobe.

"I'll demonstrate." Sephiroth pulled the green t-shirt over his head.

It's not that Sephiroth turned green... he just sort of...

"You turned green."

"No shit." He shirked it off, then pulled a red Diesel tank top over his head. He looked fucking sexy as all get out in it, except for the sudden sunburn.

"You're like a chameleon!" Cloud declared joyously.

Sephiroth nodded, "Somethin' like that. So, white, black and gray only. But I don't mind, it's sort of hot."

"It is hot. But there's not one single color you can wear?"

Sephiroth thought. "Light blue, sort of. But I look like a fuckin' ice princess in it."

After Cloud had a liberal guffaw at that, he said, "Put these on." And handed Sephiroth a pair of light gray jeans, "And... this." It was the black turtleneck that he had worn the day of their fateful copy room rendezvous.

Where they really those same people? Cloud pondered that thought as Sephiroth pulled on the outfit, the jeans fitting him perfectly with that "I'm your boyfriend, suck my cock" looseness around the knee, and the shirt hugging his frame beautifully, of course.

Cloud stepped over the pile of pilfered clothes to wrap his arms around Sephiroth's waist, the way he had wanted to do so badly that morning forever ago.

Sephiroth laughed, "What's this for?"

"I'm happy." Cloud said softly, not letting go.

"I am, too." Sephiroth answered, not letting go, either.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

When an elevator door opens, there are certain expectations.

There could very well be someone exiting. Vincent was prepared for that, standing back a few feet to give adequate 'get the fuck off and let me the fuck on' space.

It could be empty. That was ideal, because Vincent had a long ride ahead of him and wanted to sneak a smoke on the way up.

It could be several people aboard. That was okay, even if it was at full capacity, someone would get out and make room for a Turk. Probably the whole group.

But when the elevator opened, nobody tried to exit. It was not full. And it was not empty.

There was a very tiny person. A toddler, from the looks of it.

Well, that defied just about any expectation Vincent could have come up with.

He looked around, and finding no one in sight, got in. He hit the button for his destination, and crossed his arms.

After a few floors, curiosity got the better of him and he peeked over his shoulder. The child hadn't moved a muscle. He was leaning forward with his forehead and both hands pressed to the glass, watching the city fall away.

His hair looked like a wreck to Vincent. One entire half of his white-blonde head was a simple, short cut, while the other was completely buzzed. He decided that it was some sort of street style; the little guy was probably the coolest kid in nursery school for it. He still had a baby's iridescent glow to his skin, the web work of red veins visible through the light of the window where his small hands were rested. He looked like he was dressed for sleep, in thin, light green garments. No shoes or socks.

Vincent suddenly got a chill, as this was a right proper set up for some sort of creepy horror movie shenanigans.

If the kid turned around and was a brain hungry zombie, well, he could easily shoot him in the head before he leapt to feast upon his flesh.

If the kid turned out to be a ghost, well, that was fine just as long as he just stayed on his side of the elevator.

If it was some sort of blonde-ass Village of the Damned nonsense, well, he was probably shit out of luck.

Vincent cleared his throat, "Do one of your parents work here?"

His gun fingers tingled with anticipation, but the little boy didn't speak or move.

After a few completely still, silent moments, Vincent turned back towards the door. It was then that he heard a soft, barely audible whisper.

He turned again, "You say somethin'?" 

And no reply.

Instead, the elevator halted. He glanced over his shoulder, and noticed that they were between floors.

"Shit..." Vincent groaned.

"Shit."

"Don't repeat that!"

Vincent took a step to the button panel. The emergency light was blinking. He rolled his eyes and picked up the help receiver.

After a couple of rings, a man answered, "Security."

"Don't 'security' me, it's Valentine. North elevator is stuck."

"Not stuck; stopped. There was a security breach."

"Well, thank God I'm safe in this elevator. Let North go, man."

"Everything's stopped, Sir. I apologize."

"What the hell happened?"

"Something crawled up out of the fucking lab again."

Vincent rolled his eyes, "Well, I'll let you know if I see any freaks wanderin' around in the elevator."

The man laughed, "Keep us abreast, Sir."

"Oh hey, I have a kid in here with me. Real little dude. If anyone is freakin' out because they lost him, let 'em know he's in here."

"I will right now." And the conversation was cut off.

Vincent punched the receiver back on the holder with a sigh, "We might be here for a bit, kiddo." 

He looked down at the child, his small face completely smashed flat into the window.

Maybe he was having a good time.

"It's kinda fun being up in here, right?" Vincent chattered, putting his hands in his pockets, "Not scary. These elevator cables holding us up are thick. Thick! They're not goin' anywhere. They won't snap. They can't! Shin-Ra inspects these things constantly ...insurance purposes..." He brushed his hair out of his face and started making a game plan for when the elevator room began to freefall.

After a moment or two, the little guy uneasily turned away from the window and went to the door.

"We're stuck, smalls..." Vincent said apologetically, "But if you got some magic powers, now would be a good time to use 'em."

And then the elevator began to move. On the other side of the child, Vincent had a full view of the buzzed side of his head. There was a small hole in the center, a line of red blood trickling out. Vincent didn't have a chance to react to that, as the elevator stopped on the very next floor.

The child slowly laced his hands on the back of his head like a felon.

Vincent watched in dumb, perfect, calm shock as four huge security beefs stormed into the elevator and surrounded the small figure.

One pushed the kid's face into the floor while the other cuffed him. The third officer shackled his feet. The fourth didn't have anything to do, and just watched with his hand on his nightstick.

It was when they picked him up off the floor that Vincent saw his face. 

It could have been Lucy's face.

He paced for weeks, and then went to the lab.

As always, it was dark and ominous and stinking of evil. Vincent wasn't afraid of anything that the lab might hold, because he knew damn well what he was surrounded by down there. He knew there were monsters, knew there were zombies, and if there weren't any ghosts, there should have been.

As Vincent wandered through the area, he began to wonder what it was he had been doing the last time he had been down in the lab. When it dawned on him, a sloppy smile crossed his face, then immediately he shook it away.

That was disrespectful to think about.

He walked through to the brightly lit office wing that could have almost passed for normal. He went to the receptionist, a young, cute little nerdy girl that must have been new. He approached her, and she immediately turned from her monitor to give her attention.

"How can I help you, sir?"

He wasn't in the mood to flirt or chat, so he got down to business, "A month or so ago there was a security breach. I'd like to see some information on that."

The girl hopped to it, pulling up the report and giving him a warm printout.

He read it there in front of her.

Sephiroth. 25 months old. Escaped due to the gross negligence of his morning caretaker. The reports wording was that he had "unplugged" himself, and wandered right out the front door. Found and reported by Turk Valentine. Sephiroth had been properly punished, the caretaker had been replaced, the elevator had been sterilized, and everything was right as rain again.

He set the printout back on her desk, having no reason to keep it, "Where is Sephiroth now?"

She shook her head with a shrug, "I don't really know these things. I'm just a receptionist."

That meant she was trying to protect her conscience.

Don't kid yourself, honey. Vincent thought ruefully, finding her a lot less cute. He left with a nod.

He walked back out into the lab. He knew it was teeming with people, but it always had certain qualities of emptiness, darkness, always wide open and vacuous.

His legs, despite protests from his mind and heart, went to the station that used to be Lucy's.

He could almost see her desk there. Her stupid kitty cat screensavers, her candy wrappers, her pantyhose bunched up in the garbage can.

Vincent could almost see her sitting there, scratching the back of her neck with a pen. How she liked to tear pages out of vintage science textbooks that she found funny and post them up, trying for hours to explain math jokes to him to no avail. He remembered how she liked her coffee bitter, how her face lit up when he rounded the cubicle corner everyday, how her high heels clicked against the floor. He recalled with a sad smile the time she trickled an entire glass of kool-aid onto the breakfast table without realizing it, she was that engrossed in whatever goddamn new project she was getting herself into.

She was beautiful, clumsy, brilliant, secretive. Too secretive.

Her desk was gone. It was just a file cabinet, a fake plant and a copy machine now.

Vincent stood and stared.

He should have gone to her desk after it happened, taken something. Anything. A pen. A paperclip. Something. 

Vincent turned away.

"Haven't seen you here in a long time."

It was Doris, ever soft, ever quiet, ever taking her tiny, limping steps through the lab. She was getting older, close to her much awaited retirement. He remembered eating dinner in her home on several occasions, her and Lucy gossiping about the other female scientists, claiming they had no real ill feelings about any of the colleagues they cut down with their identical, braying laughter.

Vincent put a hand on one arm in habit, "What's cookin'?"

Her wrinkles shifted as she smiled, and it was genuine. Vincent looked away, not wanting to see a genuine smile at that moment.

"I heard you were the one who found our little runaway."

He smiled sideways, "Didn't mean to."

He could still hear that genuine smile in her voice, although he didn't look, "Is that why you're here?"

Vincent got to the point, because he was just in that sort of fucking mood, "Is he Lucy's kid?"

"He's her biological son, yes."

"So... where is he now?" The question implied more than just wanting to know the child's physical location.

"Tricky," she sighed.

"Tricky?"

"He's been catalogued."

Vincent looked up at that. The green pajamas. Sephiroth belonged to the lab. A specimen.

"Where is he?"

"Vin... You know you were never supposed to see him."

Vincent put a hand over his eyes, "But I did. I'm not gonna do anything fucked up. I just wanna... look."

He knew he was acting downright vulnerable. But it was Doris. It was Lucy's mother. It was okay, in front of her.

The skin of Doris' hand felt thick and lined as it took his, and she led him through the maze of neon and wire and glass. She led him to a door, more narrow than a usual door. In Shin-Ra font it read, 'Sephiroth'.

She took a large ring of keys from her waist, fished through, and unlocked it.

There was a bright florescent tube light on the cement ceiling. A crib. That was all.

Vincent took one step inside and his legs hit the metal bars.

He looked down upon Lucretia's child.

Sephiroth was sleeping, buzzed side up. There was a thick tube connecting his head to a monitor on the wall. Brainwaves. Pulse rate. Blood pressure. Mako flow.

He could hear the heavy breathing, the thin rattle of snoring. Sephiroth's eyes were shut, but Vincent recalled their color. 

Vincent's hand moved on its own down to Sephiroth's hand. The delicate fingers tightened, and it was too much.

Just when he thought he was about to lose it, the door closed quietly behind him.

Vincent quickly recovered at the sound, and reached in and down, scooping Sephiroth up. He didn't care if he woke him, he didn't care if he cried. If anything a child's scream would shake him out of this reverent stupor.

Sephiroth's eyes fluttered upon being moved, and blinked a few solid times before focusing. He seemed to be a bit confused, as he uneasily looked behind Vincent to the door, and then at him.

"Hey, Sephiroth," Vincent said to him.

The kid still seemed to be a little perturbed, almost as if he'd never been held before. His bright eyes blinked again, still sleepy. Sephiroth slowly lay forward, resting his head on Vincent's shoulder. Tiny hands balled up, gripping his lapel.

Then came a low, keeling whine.

"Aw, I know. Life sucks, don't it?"

The two year old wholeheartedly agreed. He cried raggedly, grumpily, wetting Vincent's suit with tears and slobber.

"Tell me all about it," Vincent tsked softly, running his hand up and down Sephiroth's small back.

When the baby had calmed down, and slipped back into sleep, Vincent exited the room quietly. Doris had taken a seat at a nearby desk.

"He's your grandson," Vincent said, an accusation clear in his voice.

"Technically," she said evenly. "But Lucretia wanted to give her firstborn to this project. These were her wishes. Oh Vincent, don't look that way. If she were alive today, this is what would have been happening. This was what her sacrifice was for."

Vincent would never forgive himself for saying this: "Fuck Lucretia's sacrifice."

Doris never held it against him, though. And she stood out of the way when Vincent did what he had to do.

Dr. Hojo didn't notice the Sesame Street pajamas. Or the puppy dog overalls, or the dinosaur t-shirts, or the tiny Transformers sneakers. Fashion was far, far away from his realm of observation.

He didn't notice that Sephiroth now wore Huggies diapers adorned with Smurfs that turned blue when he soiled them, versus the plain, rough dollar store generic ones. He didn't notice the storybooks and tiny toy box in Sephiroth's closet. Hojo wasn't aware that his cell even had a closet.

What he did notice, however, was the finger paint.

"What is this?" He murmured to himself, scratching at the green and blue dried around Sephiroth's tiny fingernails.

"I paintin'," Sephiroth answered casually. 

"He can speak?" Hojo demanded of his colleagues. They all looked impressed and proud, until they caught his icy glare, "Who taught him how to speak?!" 

And when Hojo purged Sephiroth, he found spaghetti-O's and apple juice.

"Who's been tooling around with his diet?!"

And then Sephiroth began to hum the theme song from Hawaii Five-O.

"Who's been letting him watch television?!"

The lab workers all looked at one another in false bewilderment.

Who says the entire Shin-Ra science faculty is cold blooded?

"I'm a monster," A five year old Sephiroth had said one day. It must have been in the winter, because Vincent remembered looking down and seeing an adult sized coat with a hood, and little feet poking from under the bottom, walking along.

"Who said that?" Vincent asked around a cigarette.

"Everybody." Sephiroth said glumly, looking up from under the hood, "They said I'm an extra testicle."

Vincent had made a face at that. He'd never really looked… but when he changed diapers on occasion the child had appeared normal...

"They said my mother's an extra testicle, too."

Vincent rolled his eyes, "Jenova?"

"Yeah."

"Jenova's not your mother. Lucretia is your mother."

"Is she an extra testicle?"

"No, and neither are you."

"Who's my father? Maybe's he's the extra testicle."

"…Terrestrial, Seph."

"Huh?"

"...Nothin'."

"So… am I a monster, or not?"

Vincent stopped walking and took a seat on the playground bench, "What if you were? What's wrong with that?"

"They're scary and bad."

"You're not scary or bad. So, so what if you were a monster? Some monsters are pretty wicked cool."

Sephiroth shook his head, "They suck."

Vincent grinned, "They do not! Would I lie to you? You ever see Alien? Those guys are extra terrestrials, and they're awesome dudes. And have you ever heard of Godzilla? Or how about Freddy Krueger? Very cool guys!"

"They are?"

"Absolutely! The next time someone calls you that, tell 'em what I said. Monsters are awesome."

No matter how big he got over the years, Vincent still vividly recalled the soft headed baby.

Even during his teenage mako tantrums.

Vincent remembered standing in the hallway and listening.

"Sephiroth! You must stop this foolishness immediately!"

Sephiroth's voice was already beginning to dip down into manly octaves intermittently, but he sounded like the fucking demon from The Exorcist when he howled, "Stupid fuckin' biiiitch!"

Vincent covered his mouth to hide his smile as a herd of nurses lost their composure and fled from the room, one in tears.

"Put that fuckin' thing down!" Sephiroth roared, "And get the hell out!"

"Se- "

"Take it with you! I don't wanna fuckin' look at it! Or your fuckin' old stupid face! Go fuckin' die already!"

"Sephiroth! There's no reason for– "

There was a wordless, hellish terror of a scream, followed by something smashing harshly, followed by the exodus of the remaining nurses and the elderly doctor. Then a steady, quick pounding.

Vincent rubbed the back of his neck as he poked his head around the corner, making a real, honest to God effort to look concerned and unamused. His effort wasn't needed anymore when he spotted his young friend punching the cement wall over and over, leaving red smeared fist prints.

A chunk of the ceiling fell down next to him and he turned his attention to it, kicking it across the room to shatter against the opposite wall. Vincent noted that the dramatic smash must have been the gurney that was now a tangled, metal mess in the far corner next to a dented pile of grape flavored "happy gas" tanks. 

Vincent considered taking a hit as he walked to the center of the room. Sephiroth went still, turned around, then threw up his hands as though someone with sense had finally walked into the vicinity.

"Have I ever got fuckin' problems!" Sephiroth declared loudly.

"Cavities?"

"No! Fuckin' stupid ass sonsabitches wanna yank the fuckin' teeth outta my head again! No! Fuuck thaat!"

"No more curse words. Why do they wanna take your teeth out?"

Sephiroth crossed his arms moodily. Then bared them.

Vincent stepped forward for a closer look, "..So what?"

"..They said I'm gonna hurt myself. Bite off my tongue in my sleep or somethin'."

Or find out if he had a fourth set. Vincent recalled a six year old Sephiroth losing all of his teeth at once, suddenly spitting out mouthful after mouthful one evening. Within the week he had grown his adult set, far too large and sharp for his mouth, earning him the short lived nickname of "Sharkface". The next year, a seven year old Sephiroth awoke one morning to find that once again he had no teeth, this time by less natural means. Yet another couple of days, a full new set, same as before. There was a meeting held by Hojo and the science department heads concerning the cosmetic and potentially greater benefits of this. Turks and military personnel alike tended to loose teeth, as well as other body parts.

Vincent sighed, "I won't let 'em take your teeth. Okay? Chill."

Sephiroth spread his trembling fingers, and all but quaked, "I can't. I can't chill. I literally cannot. I'm full of the green shit. I can't."

Vincent rubbed his neck again. Mako was making the kid look, sound, and act more and more like a crackhead with each passing day. Something needed to happen. The tantrums had to stop, or Sephiroth was going to end up on whatever painkiller morphine cocktail Hojo had in mind to control him, then probably fucking addicted, then in rehab by age 15, then a vegetable by age 20… ohhh... Vincent was simply tired. 

"...It's just puberty, kid. I swear you're poppin' up a foot every time I see you. You're lettin' yourself get too keyed up, you just have to – "

Sephiroth screamed and pulled at his chin length bob of sleek, white hair, "Do you realize

how much I have to fuckin' talk about puubeerty!? I'm soooo sick of puberty! I'm wicked fuckin' sick of it! I'm sick of the word! I'm sick of talkin' about it! I'm sick of bein' in it! What's the fuckin' poooint!?"

Vincent hid his smile again behind a cough, "You'll be glad when you're older."

"Why!?"

Vincent smiled knowingly, "So you can do a little bit more than just stare at pretty nurses all day..."

Sephiroth froze and treated Vincent to a full faced, hot pink flush, and he couldn't stop his bright gale of smoker's laughter. 

The pouting teenager put his hands on his hips, "I don't need nurses. I need to get the fuck outta dodge."

"I really am gonna smack you if you keep talkin' like that. Now where do you wanna go? I'll take you there right now."

Sephiroth spread his fingers again and looked as if words were dammed in his mouth, when suddenly the dam snapped, "Not like that! Not just today! I want outta here, Vin! I'm goin' goddamn nuts! I'm gonna... fuck!"

He looked as if he would burst out of his own skin. Vincent watched his thin, lanky form as he stormed to the other side of the room, jerking, shaking his hands as if he were hot. Moving, just trying to burn off some of that...

"...Hey, Seph."

He stopped and snarled at Vincent in question.

"C'mere."

Sephiroth stormed towards Vincent before landing suddenly and unceremoniously on his ass across the room. He immediately popped up to his elbows, gawking at Vincent. He touched his newly swollen lip, checking and successfully finding a small deposit of blood.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, he carefully, cautiously rose to his feet, looking for all the world to see like a kicked puppy.

Vincent grinned. Still conscious. After a direct, moderate hit from a Turk. That said novels, volumes, and enclopedias about the 13 year old's composure.

"Wanna go to school?"

Sephiroth's frown slowly lifted into curiosity, "…What?"

"New semester at the academy starts in August. Four months. Do you wanna go?"

Sephiroth's eyes became moons, "...Can I?"

"Can you act like a fuckin' human being for four months? No more of this Incredible Hulk bullshit?" He motioned towards the mess of ruined equipment and the overturned, destroyed gurney.

Sephiroth blinked at the mess and at the fact that Vincent had just used swear words, then toyed with the edge of his shirt, "If I'm good, I can really go? Really?"

Vincent didn't want to know that Sephiroth never left unless it was with him. He liked to pretend that it was only when he was around that shit hit the fan, only when he happened to walk in that Sephiroth was about to have his entire mouth of teeth pulled, or his hair buzzed off, or in some sort of tube full of liquid, or nutritionally deprived, or sick with some rare, strange disease, or hanging upside down from the ceiling with a three day old nosebleed dried to his face.

Vincent felt like a coward. But he preferred his fantasy that Sephiroth was just a normal teenager.

He recalled Sephiroth's attitude after starting at the academy. He wore himself out everyday. He dragged his ass across the threshold of the lab and fell into bed, too tired to scream at the lab for simple tests, and too busy to participate in the more horrific ones. Vincent fanaticized that his life became peaches and cream, although he saw his little friend less and less. He didn't feel needed anymore. Sephiroth was okay.

He was the General, now. More than okay.

Vincent wasn't thinking about Sephiroth when he saw him sucking down a big gulp on the side of the road. He thought about him often, but not at that moment.

Vincent was on call, stalking out the perimeter of 110th Avenue as preliminary work for a job. It was nothing he was too focused on, but he always was thorough in his work. He was prepared to call in the report when he saw silver hair shining in the sunlight.

Sephiroth. Sephiroth was talking, subdued but enthusiastic, involved in what he was saying. He stopped to listen to his companion, then laughed and shoved food in his face.

Some things never change, Vincent thought with a smile.

Well, maybe they did. Because just as Vincent was prepared to turn and let the portrait of a happy, well adjusted, handsome young man fade into his memory, Sephiroth leaned over and kissed the man he was with.

Kissed. The man he was with.

Vincent could have pulled out his gun and popped the skinny blonde faggot right through the forehead on the spot, but instead turned, and left.

He became plagued by memories of the strange 17 years of his life devoted to keeping Sephiroth safe, keeping him normal, keeping him happy.

He'd failed miserably on all counts. Just as he had with everything fucking else.

Chapter Image can be found here!

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-13-86737548

A/N

1- 1- Recently, I was asked an age old question : "If you made Blonde Ambition an anime, who would be the voice actorz?" to which I responded, "Fuck that. I would make a live action feature, biznatch!" So, if BA became a movie, these would be my holy and absolute picks for the parts :

Cloud Strife – Ryan Ross

Sephiroth – River Phoenix

Zack Fair – Ashton Kutcher

Vincent Valentine – Jake Gyllenhaal

April Strife – Naomi Watts

Cameron Wedge – Zac Efron 

Skylar - Wang Dong Cheng

Dr. Hojo – Steve Buscemi

Nurse Rhonda – Janine Garofalo

Aerith Gainsborough – Megan Fox

I'm a little sad looking at this incredible list… because I know this can neeever haaappen.. boo hoo hoo!

2- 2- Thank you again, so much, and eternally for reviewing. It really does help, it really does make me feel great about what I do, and it really does make Sephiroth horny. Just sayin'.


	14. Work it

"What did you do this weekend?" His mother asked.

"Not much." Was Cloud's automatic teenage answer, although it couldn't have been farther from the truth.

"Did you get to see Sephiroth?"

"Yeah!"

"That's nice. What did you two do?"

Cloud squinted, sifting through his short term memories. He immediately found kissable, parted lips, wet with shower water. Not what he was looking for. He then stumbled across the all too recent feeling of those lips and that tongue mixing with his, filling his mouth with sweet promises. A promise to see him next weekend, a promise of unquestionable devotion until that time, and if he got good grades on his exams - a promise to make him come so hard he'd scream like a banshee.

"Don't fuck yourself so much anymore," Sephiroth had teased, pulling back on Cloud's hair, exposing his throat and kissing playfully, "..That's my job now.."

Cloud had pawed at him, "But a week is sooo looong! I'll miss you too much!"

"If you really miss me that much.. just tell me. I'll drop the whole world on its ass for you."

His blue eyes fluttered for a moment at that, then Cloud rested his head against the wall and frowned, missing Sephiroth after only half a fucking hour of being apart. After spending only one night with him, Cloud was afraid he had become terribly spoiled on his affections. He felt chilly being out of the radius of Sephiroth's natural heat, lonely without his rumbling, even voice, and his lips felt severely neglected kiss-wise.

But, what had they done besides gnaw on each other?

Oh, yeah, "We watched movies, and went to the Midgar zoo."

"The zoo? That's a cute little date!"

Cloud nodded with a smile, "I was telling him how I read that the tigers there had new babies, and that people think its a lucky omen, because it was the wrong time of the year for them to mate and all. And it was really close to his place, so we took a walk there to see them."

Cloud recalled the strangeness of standing in line to buy tickets to the fucking zoo, surrounded by families and children, the pair of them looking incredibly off beat and out of place. As they neared the ticket window, Cloud was losing his nerve and starting to feel a little ridiculous for suggesting this when Sephiroth took his hand, smiling down at him as though he actually wanted to spend an afternoon at the zoo together. He kept holding Cloud's hand, letting him navigate with the simple, brightly colored map, guiding them around the huge park to the places of interest. The day was bright and sunny with a chilly breeze, cool enough to get goosebumps in the shade, and pleasant enough that you didn't see your breath.

The animals were eating the weather up, all awake and active, doing whatever animals do in their ideal little worlds. Cloud seemed to appreciate delicate creatures; seahorses, elephant shrews, and the abnormal hybrid species that were supposed to be large but were actually quite small. When they came across a family of fully grown bears the size of a gopher, Sephiroth had to quite literally cover Cloud's shrieking mouth and pull him away from the rail, lest they be thrown out of the establishment. Sephiroth was more interested in the peaceful, yet still potentially wild monsters, staring in wonder of them in their manmade habitats.

"I never knew zoos were like this." Sephiroth mused, one hand laced with Cloud's, the other half in his pocket.

"You've never been?"

"No." He answered, his green eyes never settling on one thing for long, ".. I always thought it was just animals in cages. Like in cartoons. I didn't know it was so fuckin'.. cute."

They walked through building designed to look like a wet, dingy cave. They passed fatass insects, the scarier species of monsters, coiled snakes, fish that made Cloud never want to set foot in the ocean, and then what appeared to be a huge, empty cavern.

Cloud had touched the glass and looked around, "What's in here?"

"Bats."

"Where?"

"Up there." Sephiroth pointed to nothing in particular.

Cloud squinted and searched the entire perimeter of the habitat, ".. I can't find them, Seph."

Sephiroth looked around, then put a finger to his smiling lips. Cloud watched him as he then slowly put the finger to the glass.

There was what looked like a very tiny firework on the other side of the glass, and what Cloud thought was just a dark shadow turned out to be a huge cluster of sleeping bats, now all screaming and fluttering in hysterics at the tiny terrorist attack in their midst. Cloud jumped about a mile in the air, and Sephiroth roared with laughter at both him and the winged creatures, pleased as punch to startle and annoy.

When they had finally gotten to the tiger cub exhibit, it was later in the afternoon, getting a bit colder and clear of most people. There were three fuzzy cubs, each looking like they could kick the ass of a large dog. One was snoozing in the corner on a baby blanket, while the other two were nibbling and pawing at a huge hunk of raw, red meat.

"Oy! Hallo!" Cloud had cried to them, devolving into 100 pure imported Nibelheim nerdiness, "Wouldn'tcha know it? Fwee liddle baybies!"

"Four." Sephiroth corrected with a smile.

"Four? Where's the fourth one?"

Sephiroth tapped the glass and pointed straight down. Cloud peered over an informational sign that was blocking his view before shrugging his shoulders up at Sephiroth, who then wrapped his arms around Cloud's hips from behind and hoisted him up. Both of them pressed their foreheads to the glass and peered down. The fourth tiger cub was sprawled on her back, looking up at their smooshed, ridiculous faces with bored indifference.

A large family came tumbling by and Sephiroth set Cloud quickly on his feet, probably more for Cloud's dignity than anything else. But before they moved on, Sephiroth's fingers had stroked at his hips for just a moment, staring down at him with those lovely cat-slit irises, a question hidden there. Cloud stared back up over his shoulder, unsure of what the question was or how to answer it. And just like that the moment was over and they were moving on the to the penguin igloo. 

"His eyes are actually like that?" His mother interjected.

"Yeah, they are.." Cloud said dreamily, privately recalling how they slit down to almost nothing and shined with pure electric green when Sephiroth was trying to hold himself off, narrowing those eyes and panting at Cloud with a determined longing.

"..Why?"

Cloud cocked his head, shooing the image of a pre-orgasmic Sephiroth from his mind, and certain he'd be able to pull an explanation from somewhere in his memory banks concerning the actual reason behind his sexpot eyes.

But he hadn't yet asked, and all he could come up with was, ".. I dunno."

She gave a thoughtful 'hmmf', "What movie did you see?"

"Oh, we watched one of his. The Exorcist."

"That's not a very romantic date movie! It's fucking disgusting." His mother commented.

Let Jesus fuck you! Sephiroth crowed in Cloud's memory, bringing with him the feeling of both of his long arms holding him tight, and smiling lips pressing to his ear.

Cloud's ached for him, "It was gross.. but that can be sort of romantic, don't you think?"

He heard her smile, "I guess it can be."

Cloud nodded to himself, and in Nibelheim, April began fishing around for her smokes.

It was quiet for a moment, and Cloud broke the peace irreversibly.

"Mom .. I slept with him."

There was another long stretch of silence before a cigarette was lit in his ear, "Do you mean sleeping, or do you mean not sleeping?"

"Both."

Then, an odd question, "Before or after the zoo?"

Cloud cocked his head, "..Before."

She made a sound of consideration, although not a negative one, "Well. You did it, then."

Cloud nodded slowly, "Yeah.. I did."

Then, she broke down, "I'm sorry, what? Aren't you supposed to be four years old? How old are you, anyways?"

Cloud smiled sadly, "Sixteen."

She wasn't crying, but she was making enough anguished noise to force an empathetic tear out of Cloud's right eye. He couldn't think of a word to say, because he couldn't understand what she was feeling. She had forced condom ownership onto him, seemed okay with talking until the cows came home about his feelings for Sephiroth, even made extremely light sexual references about the two of them in jest.

He had been excited to tell her about the consummation of their relationship.

But, maybe she wasn't so okay with it, afterall. Maybe she was like Cam.. supportive, but not needing or wanting to know any sort of real, in depth detail. She didn't need to be told about his big gay sex life.. she didn't want to know. He meant to tell her about how Sephiroth had held him, how he had kissed and warmed him, kissing his skin. But how could he explain that with such simple things as words? He squeezed his eyes shut against the mental images she must have been experiencing. She was obviously picturing her sensitive, small son bent over and violated with the massive, unforgiving cock of the great General Sephiroth.

Cloud was humiliated. And she had every right to be revolted.

"I'm-m sorry mom," He stuttered quietly, "I just wanted to tell you.. I didn't mean to upset you." 

"Oh, stop it. I'm not upset.. I understand. I was sixteen, too." Although Cloud already knew how old she had been when he was conceived, it startled him a little bit at the actual juncture in his own life. To have a child? Now? His jaw hung loose, and before he could compose anything remotely appropriate to say, his mother asked, "..Were you ready, Clow?"

Cloud closed his mouth. He couldn't have been more ready if he had been an ant and Sephiroth were made entirely of sugar. But to not to fill her head further with disturbing images, and also not let on that her innocent son had grown up to be a surprisingly lascivious young adult, he assured her simply, "I was definitely ready."

"That's a good thing. But.." She sighed, "You're still just a baby, you know."

Cloud's voice creaked slightly, "..I know."

"..I cannot believe I'm about to ask this of my goddamn son.." She sighed with a slight lilt of humor, "But Sephiroth was a good boy to you, right?"

Cloud paused, ".. A good boy?"

"Caring? He made you feel good, right?"

Cloud slapped at his hair in humiliation, "Yeees! Jeeesus!"

"And none of that 'If you love me you'll do it', bullshit, right?"

He laughed a little, thinking those tables were rather turned, "Nooo."

"Condoms?"

Cloud wasn't lying when he said, "Yes, ma'am."

"Every time?"

Cloud narrowed his eyes, "How did you know?"

April sighed, "Nobody does it just once. Did you use one every time?"

Cloud hesitated for a moment, and April cawed, "Skag!"

"Am not!" Cloud bellowed, "And he told me how you called him and harassed him with that Strife family bullshit!"

"Don't change the subject, you little bastard!"

Cloud grimaced, lowering his voice as heads began to pop out of doorways, "Momma, it's okay. I told you that we were both.. ya know? Virgins."

"You men are such fucking idiots. But it's your choice to make, I suppose."

Cloud smirked, "It's not like you have to worry about surprise grandbabies."

"I don't worry about them. I just wanna ensure that you'll be able to make them for me later on."

"I'll make you some, I promise. I'm just.. not worried. Sephiroth is very trustworthy. And if he does give me crabs or something.. we can always eat him."

April laughed, then hacked on inhaled smoke. After she recovered, she made a soft little noise of thought, "Was it everything you hoped it would be?"

Cloud thought about what exactly it was he had hoped it to be. Fireworks had been seen, bed sheets had been rumpled, he'd gotten off like a rocketship and he got to sleep in Sephiroth's arms, albeit a bit upset over verbage particulars.

"I wouldn't have changed a thing," Cloud confessed happily, "..I love him."

"Right, then." She said with a smile, and then smoked for a moment before asking, "Does he love you back?"

Cloud chewed on his lips, as this was the subject he had been most eager to speak to her about, "He didn't say so. I mean, I told him that I did, but .. he didn't say so back. He said something different."

"What did he say?"

Cloud prepared his mouth for the dreaded phrase, "That he values me."

"Oh, he loves you." She said flippantly.

"How do you know?"

April hummed in thought, "Sometimes.. people have a hard time saying how they feel. Especially you men. Not so long ago, you wouldn't even tell me out loud whether you liked boxers or briefs better, you know? Apparently it was neither, I could have saved some fucking energy. Give him time; it's impossible not to love you."

Cloud sighed half in relief, and half in rejection of her words entirely. He then decided to be nosy, "Mom, did Sephiroth say anything to you? About me?"

"He said that you're the most beautiful thing he's ever seen."

Cloud blinked, wondering where he'd heard that before, then remembered.

Sephiroth apparently had a habit of doting about him. 

As before, Cloud didn't know how to handle or address the relayed compliment, so he opted to chuckle casually despite the topsy turvy state of his intestines, "I used to think I was ugly."

"And why would you think that? You look like me for fucking Christ's sake!"

Cloud laughed, "You're definitely not ugly, momma. I think.. I just felt ugly."

"Does Sephiroth make you feel.. pretty?" She asked dryly for lack of a better word.

"No. Well, he does.. but, I think I changed before I found him."

"You did." April agreed, "You grew up."

He could only smile, humming in wonder at the notion.

"But don't think you're not still my little bastard." She roughly amended.

"Always."

And with that, Cloud's mother cried.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sephiroth nodded warmly to researchers who waved, working his way through the lab. He passed right by his old room, his name painted over now. Out of plain curiosity, he opened the door and looked inside. It was a broom closet.

When he arrived at Rhonda's office he knocked twice, then poked his head in, "Ron?"

She glanced up, "Yeah?"

He let himself in and closed the door, "Hey."

She crossed her legs and looked at him with a smile, "What brings you here to the mouth of hell?"

"Nothin'. You busy?"

She groaned, "No, but I will be. You know Jones called in all fucking next week, I have to grade his materia classes. Those little assholes are probably already crying bloody murder about how I won't be fair to them."

Sephiroth smiled, "Call me in to grade 'em if they get too whiney."

Rhonda laughed wickedly, "Not a bad idea, not a bad idea at all! You're not the iron fisted tyrant yet, but you will be."

Sephiroth crossed the room with a smile and paused in front of her desk. He suddenly looked and felt about 12 years old.

She looked up, "..What is it? You never visit me here unless something's up."

He straightened up to his full height, "I'm.. a little concerned about something."

"How prim and proper of you, General." She mocked.

His shoulders slumped, and he took a seat across from her, "You.. know more about me than I do. Is there any reason I shouldn't.."

"Shouldn't what?"

He made a game of working his gloves over the heel of his hand then spreading his fingers to slide it back on, "I've never been told that I oughtta be.. overly careful about.. sex."

Rhonda threw back her head and screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Shhh! What da fuck!?" Sephiroth hissed.

She pointed as though he were a poisonous bug in her office, "Oh my GOD! You finally did it! Oh MY GOD!"

Sephiroth snapped out of the chair and covered her squealing mouth, "Rhondaaaa!"

Her eyes were squinting beacons of hysterical humor and she began to babble into his glove. Slowly, he moved his hand and she was saying, " – he is so cute! When did you do it? Tell me everything!"

"I ain't tellin' you shit!" He snarled, ".. Answer my question."

She paused, "Oh. What was it again?"

Sephiroth sighed loudly at having to repeat such a thing, "Fuck, Rhonda!.. Is there anything wrong with my.." He looked around the room, "..jizz?"

She gave him a vacant stare before it dawned on her what was being asked. She narrowed her eyes, "Shouldn't you have asked me this before loading my student up with your radioactive semen?"

Sephiroth's eyes widened into circles, "Oh god.. it's not radioactive, is it?"

"No, stupid. But it could have been."

He let our a whoosh of air, but his relief was short-lived, "But, what about.. mako. And fuckin'.. Jenova?"

She gave a long sigh, "Every part of you is tainted with that, Seph. Your saliva, your sweat, feces, tears, urine.. It's just a part of you. Just like if Cloud were to ejaculate inside of you, you'd be full of his little weird, squirmy DNA carriers."

Sephiroth blinked, trying to clear his mind of mental images, "But.. it won't hurt him, will it?"

She leaned back, "Not anymore than kissing you, or even putting on a dirty shirt of yours'.." She pointed an accusatory finger, "You still should have asked before damage could have been done."

Sephiroth was hard pressed to wipe the relieved smile off of his face, "I know. But.. if there is no damage to be done.. then that's good, right?"

"Have him come in if he feels anything out of the ordinary.." She suggested mildly, "He'll be fine, though. I'm surprised he didn't want a condom, with your shady genetics."

Sephiroth huffed at the stab at his molecular structure, and muttered, "He doesn't know anything about my genetics."

"Funny. Neither do you."

Sephiroth shook his head, "I don't wanna know."

"You should read your files, Seph. You wouldn't have to crawl into my office everytime you shit a funny color. And it never hurts to be informed, you of all people should understand that."

"..I don't wanna know."

Rhonda smiled, "Then I won't tell you that you're not even beginning to tap into your physical abilities."

He gave her a desperate gaze, "..What else can I possibly prove physically?"

"Nothing at all." She said seriously, then cracked into a smile, "Especially since you lost the big V!"

The change in subject made him squirm in his chair, "Yeah, whatever.."

"How was it?!"

Sephiroth relaxed back into the chair and laced his hands on top of his head, ".. It was good. Really good."

"Yeah?" She asked cattily, lowering her eyelids, "And?"

"And..?" Sephiroth covered half his face and looked to the side, a small tint rosing his cheeks.

Rhonda cooed, "Such a gentleman to not share any perverted details with your very best dyke.."

Sephiroth only grinned and crossed his arms, "Dyke or not, I think it would be a conflict of interest for an instructor to know such intimate details about her student's sex life. Criminal, even."

"Touché, Mr. Sephiroth! Very nicely done. But, I'm sure I'll get all facts straight from the source, it'll only take a couple more years."

Sephiroth gave her a raspberry then stood, striding to the door with renewed confidence.

"Hey.." Rhonda called, and Sephiroth turned to smile at her. She thought carefully, before asking, ".. Do you wonder if you're in love?"

He tapped on the doorframe for a moment, ".. I do wonder that."

"Then you are." She smiled.

"I prolly am." He agreed.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was the fourteenth autumn of Cloud's life.

" 'scuse me."

Another person walked through the door he held open. Well, he had been holding it open for himself to walk through exclusively, but as the bell rang, student after student began to move through it as he stood to the side, small and powerless against the tide of bodies. And everytime he began to step through, someone would exit or enter quickly around him, knocking him back to the side with their presence.

The coast looked clear, and Cloud made another attempt to enter the door he held open, only to brush quickly back behind it for three girls.

" 'scuse me." He again muttered.

As expected, they turned their noses up at him. One of them was Tifa, and her glancing brown eyes neither lingered nor sparked with any sort of recognition.

Cloud finally heaved himself quickly through the doorway.

Since he was now of high school age, he could no longer count on his mother for a ride to school, as schedules conflicted with her instructing the younger classes later in the morning. This was a good thing, because she was a bitch in the morning, and rides to school often became a recital of all the things Cloud did wrong in life. He cost too much money, he slept too late, he wasn't making the most of his youth. But he'd much rather sit and listen to what a failure he was with a smile rather than walk, because walking to school meant inevitable run-ins with human beings who were also walking to school.

Sometimes Cloud would time them, remembering when each of the teenagers of Nibelheim left their houses, so he could avoid all of them. But on mornings like this, where he had been running late as he often was, he had no time to wait for the perfect window of solitude.

He crept down the one hallway of the small local school with his head down. It was empty, all the students sitting in class, attractively waiting with their hands folded on the desk for attendance to be called. Cloud Strife? Oh, he's late again. 

When he finally stowed his backpack in his locker and retrieved his books for the school day ahead, he was filled with an overpowering hunger for freedom, life, and liberty.

It was as though a beacon was calling for him. He had to go home.

So he slowly put his books away, and trudged back down the hall as though he were walking through a foot of thick mud, giving a miserable moan every so often.

When nobody noticed, he did it again, adding a cough of death to the routine.

When still nobody noticed, Cloud crumpled to the floor.

After about five minutes of staring at the ceiling with his mouth hanging open, Mrs. Davieschka finally screamed, "Cloud? Cloud, honey! Are you alright?!"

Cloud sputtered, clinging to her as though he were a fatally wounded SOLDIER, "Mrs..Davieschka?… I… don't feel so good."

"What's wrong, Cloud?" She asked, nearly frantic.

"I dunno.." He confessed bitterly, rubbing his temples, "Maybe I should… go back home…?"

"No way am I letting you walk back home!"

Fuck! Backfired! Cloud's lit up suddenly, "This happens to me sometimes! I'll be fine, I just need a cup of tea and .. ya know, some bedrest."

"Are you sure? Here! Let me get someone to walk with you!"

Cloud turned beet red and whispered fiercely, "Nooooo!"

But she had already poked her head into the senior classroom, asking for the one name Cloud had begun to pray she wouldn't.

"Jack, will you be a dear and walk Cloud Strife home? He's not feeling well. If he passes out, I know you'll be able to carry him."

Cloud could have died. But of course he heard the politely beefy reply, "Yes ma'am!"

Jack wasn't anyone important, but the entire town was certain that he was going to be. A superstar lumberjack, perhaps? Cloud had no idea. But the height of idealism rested with Jack. If only all the boys could be as good, as big, as strong, as wonderful.

Jack didn't say a word during the 15 minute walk. Not a word. Of course, neither did Cloud, who only hung his head low and followed beside him.

When they stopped in front of Cloud's home, Jack paused before turning back to school. He delivered Cloud a look that said so much, and so little.

The general impression was that Cloud was nothing more than a jizz splotch on a dirty sweat sock.

Cloud sighed, crossing the threshold from the cruel world into his bedroom. He immediately flipped on his stereo and fell into bed, taking clothes off like a snake shedding skin. He lay naked, simply staring at the ceiling, not a single thought in his head.

Empty. Aimless.

He had no passions. He had no talents. He had no personality. He had no friends, no father, and a mother who hated him and would be better off if he was dead. He was small and ugly, the laughing stock of his family. He was nothing to no one.

Jack may have been nothing more than a brainless douchebag, but at least people for some reason thought he might have had some sort of potential.

Even suicide offered no relief, because Cloud knew he was surely condemned to burn in hell. But.. he couldn't help himself. He was flawed by design, a failure right down to the cellular level.

He was a masturbator, an outcast, and guilty of… faggotry.

Not even Jesus Christ loved Cloud Strife.

He reached over and abruptly turned the music off and turned his TV on.

It was something CNN-ish. He turned the channel to something hopefully funny, as he desperately needed to laugh, but the TV only paused, then blinked back with the same military infested image. He furrowed his brows and tried for cartoons, only to be greeted with the same program.

His arm dropped down in utter defeat. He rolled over onto his side and reached under his bed, retrieving the book he was currently reading.

He was not an avid reader, but his mother thought that he was, bringing him home books constantly. Perhaps hoping he was hiding some sort of secret genius intellect behind his fumbling clumsiness and average grades. Who says all losers are brainy? But there was nothing else to do, so he crossed a leg over his knee and cracked the damn book open to the first page, waiting for the program to end so he could watch TV like a civilized person.

"Being the General of the Shin-Ra army for the past 27 years of my humble life has filled me with nothing but pride and respect for the vast and talented personnel, from the loyal and fierce Turk division, to the brave Navy, to the .."

Cloud sighed loudly, trying to ignore the old man's prattle. He wagged his foot and tried the cooking channel. No such fucking luck.

"..right down to the mechanic crew. We need every single member of this army, for a vehicle can not function without the screws holding the casings in place.."

Cloud gave a guttural cry of boredom. He might as well just go back to school!

"..know that. The only man who I've witnessed during my career to truly appreciate the value and importance of every single member of this army is standing right here beside me. He has proven himself in every way I can imagine a leader should. He is able to command, yet able to understand.."

Cloud threw the book into the TV, knocking the antennas out of whack and making the image buzz and rattle noisily.

With a heavy sigh at his own stupidity, Cloud rolled off of bed and stomped over to the small TV set. He began to mess around with the bunny ears, hearing a different voice speak intermittently through the scrambling, then the older voice. He couldn't make out anything that was being said, nor was he trying to.

The image stabilized, and Cloud paused.

It wasn't the older man on the screen, anymore.

"Take care of my army.. General Sephiroth." The old man said warm heartedly, and the young man beside him lowered his unearthly, neon green eyes and tilted his head forward only very slightly, almost too graceful to be truly considered a bow. The flowing, liquid metal tresses of his hair spilled down his shoulders and sparkled in the sunlight, contrasting sharply with the black of his leather uniform.

The young man then opened his eyes and straightened up.

He pursed his lips slightly.

Cloud's hand flopped to the side of its own accord, and the bunny ears fell over, ruining the image. With a lot more insistence, Cloud cursed and messed around with the antennas, finally holding them in just the right combination of pressure and touch.

The screen was filled with old man wrinkles, a close up on the retiring General.

Then, oh then, the screen was only the new General.

"General Sephiroth.." Cloud said for the first time, "..Sephiroth."

He touched the screen, and felt the small layer of static electricity snap at his fingertips. He moved them to the image of soft, full lips.

"Somebody kiss him.." Cloud murmured to the entire world.

Sephiroth needed to be kissed. For real. Like he deserved to be kissed. Cloud was certain of it, and certain that he was the one to give it to him.

Then he shook his head at his own foolishness, thinking that a man like that probably had people lined for a chance to be with him. He was perfection, after all. If someone as ignorant as Cloud could see that, then Sephiroth probably was with someone deserving of him. Someone who would kiss those lips and make them smile.

But still.. unworthy as he was, Cloud watched the beautiful man's mouth, entranced. Sephiroth looked into the screen, seemed to look right at him. He felt his hapless sexual organs react and let out a shuddering sigh.

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed, just a little, then blinked.

Although he had never been compelled to do such a thing before, Cloud pressed his lips to the television screen, touching his tongue tenderly to the glass, offering up to Sephiroth the very best kiss he could possibly give. 

The static licked back at him, and if he just closed his eyes.. it almost felt like breath.

Do you believe in love at first sight, Cloud Strife? Sephiroth asked him.

"Yeah.." Cloud breathed against the glass, his fourteen year old voice dipping down into a sultry purr as he flicked his tongue across Sephiroth's lips, begging for him to open up.

I'm glad because.. although we've only just met.. I think I love you.

"I love you, too.."  
Do you want me, Cloud?

"Oh, yeah.."

Then come and get me.

Right then, his mother barged in, "Why the fuck are you still home f…"

Cloud, buck naked and sporting a furious erection, jerked away from the screen, his hands shifting the antennas in surprise and ruining the image of Sephiroth into snow once again.

After a split second survey of the situation, she quickly closed the door and said no more to him about it, or skipping school. She had always just assumed he was trying to work in some pornography channels. It was impossible this far up on the mountain, but she gave him an 'A' for effort, anyways.

Once Cloud had worked up the nerve to actually bring his face out of his pillows, he turned his TV back on. The cooking network. The cartoon station. The stand up comedy show.

No more Sephiroth. And Cloud had no idea how to find him again. He tried the internet, finding only a few small photos and two or three sentence articles. He scoured newspapers for information on a daily basis. He even took to paying attention to the news when his mother watched it in evenings. The Timeweek magazine cover was the juiciest catch he had ever reeled in of Sephiroth fandom.

Cloud remembered all of this with a muted sort of detachment. Perhaps if he remembered it all too clearly.. the longing, the fanaticizing, the terrible lonely ache that drove him to tears at night.. he'd go stark raving mad at his own outrageous fortune.

But nevertheless he was in awe of the turn of events leading up to himself walking towards Sephiroth, who was waiting for him. For Cloud. The idea exhilarated him so, that he began to trot faster until he couldn't help but run.

Sephiroth was leaned up against his truck in the early afternoon snow, a gray jacket, a pair of black pants and a smile. The jacket was partially unzipped, and Cloud could see the creamy glimpse of his shirtlessness underneath. Sephiroth pushed off of the vehicle and moved towards Cloud, meandering, casual, his arms wide at his sides and ready to accept him.

Cloud was fully intent on giving him that kiss again; the best one he could possibly give. It was the one he gave to Sephiroth everytime their lips met. But as long as that man smiled at him that way, held his arms open.. he would give it again. And again. And again.

The kiss General Sephiroth had actually felt that day two years prior was nowhere near as wet or sweet as the one the teenager in Nibelheim had planted on the TV set for him.

No, it was tight lipped, false, and tasting of lipstick.

She had been introduced by Angeal, a cousin of a friend of a girlfriend of a something-or-fucking-other. It was their only date together, and he had given her no indication that he wanted to be kissed, nor did she have any indication that it was at all appropriate.

But when he left the stage, now officially the General, she was overcome by something. Maybe it was the smile he gave her, as she was the first person he saw, and was about to burst with happiness. Maybe it was the uniform, or maybe it was just the moment. Sephiroth never knew because they never really spoke about it, or anything else for that matter. Either way, she took his face and kissed him. 

He was barely 20, and only kissed briefly once before as a joke by a hyperactive volunteer MSO girl in a cute uniform. When her tongue nudged into his mouth, he thought it was one of the most disturbing things he had ever felt.

And after all he had felt in his lifetime, that was really saying something.

Sephiroth figured that perhaps that churning in his stomach was the "sparks" that people often spoke of. He was quiet and shy towards her after the sudden meeting of their lips. He was overcome by all of the attention he was receiving, too sick with anxiety and nerves to eat or drink, and on the whole not really thinking about her at all. Thus, the impression he gave as a person was a considerably negative one. One of a bad kisser, a robotic non-personality, and an anorexic.

When he dropped her off that evening, they sat for a moment in silence.

He was wondering if he should say something.. kiss her? Get out and open her door? Crack a rude joke?

Before he could decide, the liquor in her said this: "You're really boring."

He never had much luck with straight women.

Lesbians however, were crazy about him.

"I would have punched her cunt!" Julie panted on the track beside him.

"I would have ripped out her weave!" Elena panted on his other side.

"I would have run her ass over with the tank before she could get inside!" Rhonda panted behind him.

"I shoulda!" Sephiroth agreed.

"Oh, General Seeephiroth? I can't run anymore!" Rhonda wheezed.

"No man gets left behind." Sephiroth declared and held out his arms, wrapping them under Rhonda's legs as she leapt onto his back.

"What you need is someone genuine!" Elena suggested, wiping her sweaty brow, "Lipstick is always a bad sign!"

"I wear lipstick!" Julie crowed.

"And you're a bitch!" Rhonda called, happily hanging onto Sephiroth and not weighing him down a bit.

"I don't need anyone genuine or not genuine." Sephiroth decided firmly, "No fuckin' relationships. I'm no good at it."

"You will be.." Rhonda said very close to his ear, ".. once you find the right person. You're the biggest sweetheart I've ever met."

"I'm not sweet." He argued with a snarl.

She smacked the side of his head, "Yes you are! And it was just a crappy blind date, no big deal. There are plenty of girls out there for you."

"Hotter girls!" Elena agreed.

"With bigger tits!" Julie declared.

He had nodded, not yet understanding why the sound of that wasn't exactly mouth watering.

Sephiroth didn't remember a word of this conversation. He didn't remember enjoying kissing the next girl who on their third date gave him an ultimatum about his hair, forcing him to choose between her affections and a box of black hair dye or his natural silver coloring. Or getting stood up by the next girl, or stalked then subsequently repulsed by the next one, or the one that lasted the longest and made the least sense of all.

He'd forgotten all about his failed attempts at flaky relationships, because they just didn't fucking matter anymore in the face of.. love.

Nobody had ever told Sephiroth that they loved him before.

And although he wasn't able to say the words back, Sephiroth was happy, and it touched every aspect of his life.

He found himself sleeping better, he found himself feeling better. He found himself smiling for no reason at all. He found himself drumming his fingers. He found himself watching the clock for 4pm to hear Cloud's voice, to hear about his day and share stupid details of his own. He found himself utterly disenchanted by his own touch alone in his bed, mentally recreating the way Cloud looked and felt, his orgasms seeming more like a bored yawn from his cock rather than the quaking explosion Cloud's tight body and hot lips ripped from him. He even found himself longing for weekends, which had been meaningless and even dreaded up until this point in his life.

Even with a black school hoodie hiding his face and hair, the swaying left hipped gait of the tiny approaching person made Sephiroth's heart pound in his chest. He walked towards him to meet him halfway, snatching him up in his arms when Cloud hit his chest at a dead run.

Sephiroth chuckled into the kiss Cloud immediately granted him, nipping softly at his lips, his sweet little tongue reaching out to greet his own. It was a warm exchange, a sudden contrast to the cold surrounding them. Sephiroth reached into the hood to feel Cloud's hair, and found that every part of Cloud was freezing, especially his little button nose, which felt more like a little ice cube.

Sephiroth hugged him tightly, "Why you so cold, baby?"

Cloud peered up at him from underneath his hood, "I just ran over to the administration building to get my report card.." 

"Uh oh.." Sephiroth smiled, consciously generating more warmth for little Cloud, trekking like a good little trooper all over campus in the snow, ".. What's the verdict?"

Cloud bit his lip, taking a piece of paper from his back pocket and unfolding it. He slowly handed it over to Sephiroth, watching his green eyes flit across the print out.

"A, A, A, fuckin' A." Sephiroth's face split into a wide grin, "You got straight A's?"

"I've never gotten good grades before! But I tried really hard and Cam helped me study.. and I.. I actually did good!" Cloud babbled happily, and bounced up and down while Sephiroth let out a joyful noise that Cloud hadn't heard before; a handsome, wordless shout of victory.

He picked Cloud up and squeezed him again, growling happily, "What the fuck!? I thought you were just a dumb blonde! We gotta do somethin'!"

"You know what I wanna do?.." Cloud said in low tones, his tone full of tentative seduction.

The green eyes flickered brightly, and Sephiroth cocked his head in question.

Cloud melted against him, shivering for reasons other than the cold, ".. I wanna go home."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

In his echoed and meaningless dreams, Sephiroth felt tiny puffs of heat on his skin, and warm weight pressed onto him. For a split second, he saw a large, loud machine that he didn't consciously remember, for he hadn't seen it since he was three years old.

It makes hot, Sephiroth recalled childishly, forgetting this as soon as it flitted from the eye of his thoughts.

After a few moments of wonder, he smiled knowingly within the dream, remembering what was lying on top of his waking self and wrapped up in his arms. In response to this lucid knowledge, his brain created a vision of Cloud for him, one that Sephiroth thought was slightly off. His subconscious had toyed it, playing up his favorite features and removing all imperfections until Cloud was a supernatural bombshell.

His gently tanned skin radiated a soft golden dewy glow, contrasting with the pale yellow spikes of hair that framed his face perfectly, keeping clear of his sea blue eyes. The creature of perfection cocked his blonde eyebrow slowly, his slightly too long fingers flirtatiously weaving the patterns of hot breath that he felt on his skin.

Sephiroth didn't see the point in having a wet dream with an incubus when the real thing was so near. He cracked his eyes, then squinted in momentary confusion.

They were on the couch. He looked to the cable box. 3:42 am. He looked to his groin. Painfully hard.

Memories fell into place; the previous evening had been a sacrifice to the gods of laziness.

Both men had draped over each other on the couch in this exact position, prepared to act upon all the delicious things they'd been promising to each other on the phone all week, and then perhaps venture out for some dinner.

But instead, they fell victim to a Project Runway marathon.

It had been informational at least, as things the people said would trigger a story from either Sephiroth or Cloud, a short moment from their lives to share. Like when Cloud's soccer shorts split during a game when he was 5, or the fact that Sephiroth seemed to fight better when he got a leather wedgie. Every commercial that played, they learned useless but important opinions on either fast food or laundry detergent. Sephiroth found out about the time Cloud ate not one, but two rock solid frozen Toaster Strudels because he couldn't figure out how to make an unplugged toaster work, and Cloud burned the information in his brain that Sephiroth adored truffles, and chomped them down whenever he needed to put on a little weight.

And when the contestants were drenched in drama and neither Cloud nor Sephiroth cared that much about yards of wasted fabric or an illegal method of layering ruffles, their lips were never far from each other's. Often they would just be starting to get a little hot and heavy when the episode's runway show would begin, and Cloud would go, "Oooh! Oooh!" while popping up off of Sephiroth to turn up the volume. But their constantly interrupted mini-romps had eventually rendered them both nude, their clothes tossed about the living room.

But the week had been a busy and tiring one for both of them, and when Cloud had begun to doze off in the nook between Sephiroth and the couch backing, Sephiroth had turned off the TV and pulled the sofa blanket down on top of them, content to only be near Cloud's soft and bare skin for the night.

But now it was morning, and Sephiroth had only half an hour before he needed to leave for work. This reality brought him to wakefulness, and he gave a lazy sigh.

Cloud felt the change in Sephiroth's breathing and heart beat. He shifted moodily, pressing his cheek harder against Sephiroth's chest, almost as if he was trying to keep him down and near.

Sephiroth decided to comply for two reasons.

The first was that he had fallen asleep in the most uncomfortable position in the known universe : his head was up on the armrest of the goddamn couch. He knew that when he moved, his neck was going to have the crick of a lifetime. And with Cloud's meager, but substantial weight sprawled across him, he probably had a limb or two fallen asleep as well. So, he decided it was best to lay still and put off agony for a few more minutes.

The other reason he stayed still, was that Cloud looked like a little angel when he slept.

Sephiroth looked down to find the greenish streetlights slitted across his face from the blinds, blonde shaggy hair completely hiding the eyes that were large and sparkling and gorgeous just a moment ago in his mind. A bar of light instead fell over Cloud's mouth, enhancing the texture of his lips, parted slightly with sleep. Sephiroth noticed tiny bite marks on the bottom one, red speckles where it must have bled from a nervous habit. The knuckles of his hands folded under his chin were scratched, scabbed over. There was a very characteristic mole on his arm.

Sephiroth preferred this reality that his mind wasn't clever enough to create; this was a beauty that made his breath pause.

He could hardly stand it. His lips, almost without permission, puckered and reached out to caress Cloud's cheekbone. Cloud half-woke and clumsily shifted on top of him, his arms burrowed and cradled under Sephiroth's head, his long legs straddled tighter about his waist, and the hard line of his cock rested against his stomach.

Sephiroth groaned lightly, "..It's time for me to get up, baby."

"But I'm comfy here.." Cloud said softly against Sephiroth's jaw.

Sephiroth made a soft sound of agreement. As his fingers and palms coasted up and down his narrow back, feeling the silkiness of his skin and the promise of muscle beneath it, his self control started to quickly unravel.

"I gotta go to work." He whispered.

".. Noo.." Cloud moaned unhappily, and his body got a little heavier, his breathing a little deeper, a little slower and Sephiroth looked at his face to see his eyelids locked closed.

Goddamn, Cloud was cute when he slept.

Alert! The time is now 3:51am!... Sephiroth's internal clock was going haywire, but he couldn't help but whisper softly between kisses, "Don't fall back asleep on me, baby. The bed's better."

"Mm-mm.." Cloud wordlessly disagreed, and Sephiroth felt him go completely boneless.

Well, except for one bone.

"Up now." Sephiroth said, a small amount of forcefulness entering his sleep raspy voice.

It was enough forcefulness that Cloud lurched, willing his tired limbs to shift heavily. He sat up on Sephiroth's lap and bellowed a wide mouthed yawn, the innocence of his demeanor completely mismatched with the furious erection jutting from between his legs.

Sephiroth's eyes zeroed in, but then averted, knowing that if he started fooling around with Cloud he'd really, truly never make it to work. Tired, cute Cloud he could stand to deal with.. but horny, playful Cloud was almost irresistible, and he wasn't up to that particular challenge. And although Sephiroth would have committed murder to have the leisure to fuck Cloud to both of their heart's desires...

"Up. Now."

"Seeeph, I'm tryinng.." Cloud slurred grumpily, throwing the black and yellow blanket off of his shoulders and stretching upwards with a long arch. Sephiroth closed his eyes as his own body snapped straight up at the sight, rising to nudge into the round softness of Cloud's ass.

Cloud paused when he felt it, suddenly well aware of the compromising position they had found themselves in this morning.

Oh shit, Sephiroth thought as Cloud put his hands on his chest and letting them stroke and tease, giggling slowly.

".. Hee hee.. You're pretty!"

Sephiroth groaned, "Cloud..."

"Seph..." Cloud whispered back, his blue eyes now wide awake and radiating boyish excitement in the dark.

Fuck it.

Even though it was 4am and not getting any earlier.. Sephiroth had to indulge, just a little bit. He laced his fingers with Cloud's and then tugged him back down until he lay flat on top of him, his lips near enough to taste his playfully anxious giggles.

Sephiroth memorized the way it felt with Cloud's arms and legs enveloped around him, and his frantic little heartbeat buzzing away against his chest. Letting himself pretend for a moment that they had all the time in the world, Sephiroth lifted his hips off the couch, nuzzling his cock into the warm, spread crevice of Cloud's ass, taking in the soft scent and taste of Cloud, both stronger from sleep.

"I should have turned off that stupid show and fucked you last night." Sephiroth whispered against Cloud's lips, then groaned lengthily with regret, "..I should have fucked you all night.."

"Oh, well.." Cloud sighed, a hint of hope in his voice as Sephiroth nibbled on the tiny hollow in his chin where his spike normally was, ".. let's do it now.."

Sephiroth's cock ached at Cloud's opening, and he looked pained as he hissed, "I can't, baby.."

Cloud began to carefully feel out Sephiroth much like one cracks open a safe. A kiss to the lips, a swirl of his tongue, another kiss to the fingers, suck on them lightly.. He then took the liberty of moving a little more towards the south, kissing Sephiroth's neck, his collarbone, his beautifully sculpted chest, his tiny, hard nipples.

Sephiroth's hips involuntarily sprang up into Cloud's when he nibbled on one. He looked up and gently raked his teeth across it. When Sephiroth's chest began to move up and down quicker, and Cloud figured this was the code breaker.

He sat up on Sephiroth's hips with a slow roll, reaching behind him to press his big erection pointedly against himself, "I wanna.. ride you.."

Sephiroth's eyes glowed up at him, lidded and smoldering.

He then sat up, gently brushed Cloud off his lap, and left the couch.

Cloud blinked in the dark, then sat up and sputtered, "S- Seeeph! Where are you goiiing?!"

"Shower." Sephiroth said, disappearing into the shadows.

Wrong code! Trying to salvage the situation, Cloud quickly scrambled to his feet and rushed towards the bedroom just in time to see the bathroom door close.

He balked at the barrier, "I can't take a shower with you!?"

"Nope." Came the echoed reply from beyond the door.

"Why!?"

"Because."

Cloud pushed his face into the door jam, "What did I do wrong..?"

Sephiroth sighed and Cloud heard the smile in his voice, "Absolutely nothin'."

"Then why ...?"

"I told you. No time."

Cloud opened his mouth to plead more, but then he looked over his shoulder at the large, slightly unmade, entirely vacant bed. Standing on his slim legs, throbbing and tired from a week of hard exam drills and exercises, he became very aware his muscles had had very little time to recover. He raced over and dove in, every pillow and sheet seeming to caress him with utmost comfort. He closed his eyes and listened as the water rushed overhead, and let the sound lull him to a light, relaxed place where he was just almost dreaming, and hovered there as long as he could hold on. Then he was falling, falling. 

When he opened his eyes, Sephiroth standing over him at the bedside, fully dressed and watching him doze. Cloud reached out and touched his hand, feeling the ghost of warmth from the shower, the ultra smoothness of recently washed skin. Sephiroth put a knee on the bed and swung his other leg over Cloud. His hair was soft and still dry; he hadn't washed it. Cloud mentally snapped his fingers at having missed seeing Sephiroth with his hair tied up.

Cloud gazed at him for a moment, not completely aware that his face was alight with a careless, sleepy smile.

The vision of General Sephiroth smiled back and kissed him, letting his tongue flit into his mouth. Cloud kicked off the blanket to feel all of him. He felt his nudity should have been somehow embarrassing next to all that hot, official Shin-Ra uniform leather.. but it wasn't. Cloud didn't know how to rationalize the way it felt; the leather seemed like Sephiroth's second skin, his real skin sliding beneath the surface, pulling at Cloud. 

Sephiroth closed the kiss off with a hearty pop, "Gonna get some sleep?"

Cloud pouted and shrugged a shoulder.

Sephiroth pressed his lips to his ear, "You better."

"..Then I will." Cloud promised on a sultry note, wrapping a bare leg around Sephiroth's hips, holding him down and pulling him closer.

Sephiroth sighed hesitantly, "Maybe we shouldn't do these sleepovers on days before I work, baby."

Cloud suddenly felt as though he had crossed a line, and loosened his leg, slipping it off of him, "I'm sorry.."

"It isn't your fault, it's mine." Sephiroth said, his lips brushing Cloud's cheek as he spoke, "I tried.. but I can't keep my hands offa you.."

Cloud bit his lip as Sephiroth's big, gloved hand brushed over his knee and pushed it gently into Cloud's chest, spreading him wide open. Cloud panted a little, gripping the hard muscles of Sephiroth's thighs as his palm spread wide and fingers dug in. 

"Don't go.." Cloud moaned softly. 

"I have to." Sephiroth rumbled, and it sounded somewhat sad and innocent.

"Can I come with you?"

"After work."

Cloud chuckled a little, "Nooo.. I mean come with you to work today?"

Sephiroth laughed gruffly, "No way."

"Why not?.. Ah!" Cloud moaned as his cock was encased in an abrasively seamed leather fist, not being able to decide if it hurt or felt good.

Sephiroth's grip suddenly became feather gentle, and moved up and down Cloud's long shaft slowly, "I got ten minutes before I need to leave. So stop bein' so goddamn hot."

".. W-why can't I come with you?"

Sephiroth sucked his little pout into a kiss, "Because I can't function around you."

"I can help, though.. remember?"

"Go to sleep. I'll be back around noon, 'kay? Try to still be naked and in bed, it'll save time."

And with that, Sephiroth rolled off of him, palming and adjusting his large and obvious arousal. Cloud bit his lip and watched him go, before growling in determination and snatching a pair of Sephiroth's jeans from the floor.

He stumbled into the kitchen, pulling them up, "Give me a chance! If I distract you too much, I can always walk back to school!" Cloud reached down to shove his rock hard cock into the jeans, an easy task due to the loose fit, "I got straight A's afterall.."

Sephiroth pursed his lips, "..Can you behave?"

Cloud nodded seriously, going up on tiptoes to lace his fingers behind Sephiroth's neck, "I promise I won't embarrass or disrespect you or distract you. I'll be a perfect gentleman."

Sephiroth searched Cloud's face for a moment before turning away from him, shaking his head with a disbelieving smile.

Cloud frowning as he watched him drink orange juice from the jug, "Well? Can I? Can I? Pleeease?"

Sephiroth smirked with full cheeks, then swallowed.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"No sexy shit." Sephiroth warned as Cloud skipped happily in rolled up jeans behind him through the parking garage underneath the Shin-Ra building.

"Please specify the sexy shit, Sir?"

"No touching. No grabbing. No giggling. No dirty talk. No teasing. And no answering my phone. No making noise while I'm on the phone. No whining and no begging. And you have to do every fuckin' thing I say. Got it?"

Cloud mentally rolled his eyes, as he wasn't a fucking toddler, but puffed out and barked, "Sir, yes, Sir!"

Sephiroth's eyes flashed at that, "Did you ever call me 'Sir' before we got together?"

"Always, Sir!"

"Goddamn.." Sephiroth said with a smile, "Why didn't I notice?"

"Because I was only a nameless amoeba to you, Sir!" Cloud happily suggested, his heavy bag full of entertainment bouncing against his ass, mostly magazines pilfered at the last minute from underneath Sephiroth's coffee table.

"Don't gimme that noise, you know I thought you were gorgeous."

Cloud puffed out again, "Yup!"

Sephiroth stopped in the nearly empty garage, almost causing Cloud to bump into him. He turned and took Cloud's face, kissing him with soft, tender lips. Cloud hugged Sephiroth's waist, trying not to settle too much into the kiss, but wanting it to last.

"Just.." Sephiroth searched for words when he straightened up and pulled away, brushing Cloud's hair to the side and out of his eyes, ".. don't call me on my bullshit today, eh?"

Cloud wasn't exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but nodded, adjusting the strap of his heavy bag. Sephiroth tucked his fingers under the strap and took it from him, throwing it around his own neck with ease. Cloud smiled and followed alongside Sephiroth closely as he began to strut again, wanting nothing more than to hold his hand, but leaving a respectable sort of distance.

"Good morning, Sir."

"Good morning."

This was said approximately one million times as they walked through the lobby of the Shin-Ra office building. Some people would say it in unison, some groups would each say it one by one as they passed, and Sephiroth returned the greeting every single time.

"Good morning, Sir."

"Good morning."

They got on an elevator with a group of suited business persons. Noone spoke, but whenever one would exit, they would greet Sephiroth as they left.

Elevator etiquette was lost on a smalltown boy who had only ever been on one in a department store. So Cloud made himself small and backed into a corner behind Sephiroth as more people entered.

He looked over his shoulder to try and appreciate the view that people talked about even in Nibelheim. The Shin-Ra building elevators; it was almost a fucking tourist attraction. They moved up and the city moved down, becoming smaller, when Cloud began to feel like he was leaning sideways. He leaned the other way to compensate, and bumped into a business lady.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, excuse me." He said politely, and the small room of professionals bristled. Even Sephiroth gave him a quirky little glimpse over his shoulder.

You were not supposed to speak on elevators!

Okay okay.. Cloud thought, getting the message loud and clear from the lengthy, annoyed glares he received from behind horn rimmed glasses and from underneath shitty toupees. He made himself even smaller as people got out and more people got on.

They began to ascend again, the city became smaller again.. then the world tipped sideways again. Cloud batted his eyes, stricken with a terrible wooziness. Stop.. up.. down.. sideways.. stop.. up.. up.. siiideways.

Oh God.. Cloud thought, closing his eyes and turning around. But he still saw the effect of rising in his mind, and then began to feel it in his stomach. The elevator came to another stop, and as it again began to ascend, it lurched several times. Cloud felt a sourness bloom in his stomach, and felt incredibly dizzy behind his eyelids. He put his hand on Sephiroth's waist to steady himself, careful to hide it from public view.

He looked over his shoulder to find Cloud weaving like a drunk where he stood.

"Are you alright?" Sephiroth murmured quietly.

All eyes in the elevator were now on them.

Cloud swallowed, "M-may I take the stairs, Sir? I don't feel well. At all."

If you weren't supposed to talk on elevators, you definitely weren't supposed to say that you weren't feeling well on elevators. The group of people all made quiet, miserable noises, trying their best to squeeze against the walls opposite of the tiny foreign boy and potential vomit stain instigator.

Cloud began to take his heaping helping of humiliation to throw on top of his physical discomfort, when Sephiroth announced, "I want everyone off at the next floor."

Sure as shit, within seconds they stopped, and without a word of complaint, everyone vacated the elevator. Sephiroth swiped a card at the button panel, and all the lighted buttons disappeared, and he again tapped the button for only their destination. After the door had closed, Sephiroth turned to him and framed in his vision with his hands.

Seeing only Sephiroth, only his handsome face and feeling his warm hands, Cloud could have sworn his sickness dissolved completely. But then there was a small lurch and he winced as if in pain.

Sephiroth spoke softly, "What is it? Heights?"

"Not really. It's more the up and down and up and down.." Cloud confessed, blinking and exhaling slowly.

"It's a mental thing, you know." Sephiroth said, holding Cloud's head completely steady, "You gotta remember that you're still. Just keep sayin' that to yourself. I'm still. I'm still."

"I'm still." Cloud said.

"The room's movin', but we're still," Sephiroth repeated soothingly, "I've got you."

Cloud repeated it with him. After a few moments, Sephiroth's fingers massaged into his temples, "We're going to the 60th floor. You'd make it up the stairs around lunchtime."

"I'd truck up 60 floors to be with you. No problem."

"I'd truck it with you."

"You could carry me."

"And that wouldn't make you motion sick?"

Cloud bit his lip, "Riding you would never make me sick.."

Sephiroth smiled and leaned forward until their foreheads touched and his hands boxed in both of their visions, "I thought I said no dirty talk.."

Cloud smiled, "Sorry, Sir."

Sephiroth slowly moved his hands away, his green eyes dilating slightly from the introduced brightness, and radiated amusement at the sky blues ones, "Wanna look again? Might be better."

Cloud exhaled, then turned to look out the famous Shin-Ra elevator windows.

"We're still." Cloud said.

"Yup." Sephiroth agreed.

Cloud felt his stomach quiver just a little, but they soon arrived on their floor.

"Good morning, Sir," everyone said.

"Good morning." Sephiroth said to everyone.

Cloud followed Sephiroth's strut through a maze of cubicles until they were in a wide hallway. And finally, to an opening of larger, nicer cubicles.

"Good morning, Sephiroth," people began to say.

"Morning." Sephiroth began to reply.

Until finally, there was a girl who said, "Uh oh! You're almost late, Gen-Gen!"

And Sephiroth said, "Whatever."

"Who's your little buddy?" She asked, looking up from the desk calendar she was color coding.

"This is Cloud Strife."

She put her marker down with a loud bang, "So you're Genny's little boyfriend!"

Cloud blushed deeply upon being totally outed by a perfect stranger, but said, "Hello, ma'am." And he held out his hand. She took it and gave it an awkward sort of squeeze, as if she didn't know what to do with it. People from Midgar had serious hang-ups about shaking hands. Maybe it wa like talking in elevators.

After their awkward contact, she smiled at Sephiroth with an edge of wickedness, "Good news, General!"

Sephiroth frowned, saying nothing.

She popped, "A conference call at 11!"

Sephiroth's face twitched with displeasure, and he opened the door to his office, leaving it ajar for Cloud. He wasn't sure if it was proper to close it, since people in this area obviously were onto them, but he shut it quietly anyways, sure that Sephiroth would appreciate the privacy for himself at least.

Sephiroth's office wasn't that fancy. It was much like his apartment, a sort of mismatched, odd collection of furniture that seemed to be somewhat retro. Sephiroth's office chair was gray instead of a typical black one. The wood of his desk was treated with a black finish, the seat opposite it was a darker gray and rather huge. There was one picture on his wall, and it was a movie poster for Firestarter. Cloud smiled and moved towards a bookshelf, wondering what sort of books a General has in his office. How to be Sexy and Intimidate People? 10 Ways to Take Over the World? Leather for Beginners? But it was filled with only files and unmarked three ring binders. Cloud didn't dare try to examine their contents.

Not seeing another seat in the room besides the one opposite Sephiroth's desk, and finding it somehow inappropriate to take that one, he searched for another option. It was then that he noticed that the window next to Sephiroth's desk was a bay window, just wide enough to fit Cloud's skinny ass. On it was a globe, and several rolled up maps.

"Can I throw this on the floor?" Cloud asked of the items in his way.

"Sure." Sephiroth answered, booting up the computer on his desk.

Cloud carefully removed the items and prepared his roost for the day, making a neat pile of magazines sorted by importance. He had just made an organized little station of time killing when the door burst open.

"Oh I cannot fucking believe her, Seph. I could tear my fucking heart out and hand it to her on a plate and that cold bitch wouldn't even fucking blink."

Zack immediately swaggered to the gray chair opposite Sephiroth, then paused and looked at Cloud.

Without so much as a greeting, he asked, "Would you let me fuck you, Cloud?"

Cloud's face went wild with different reactions, then settled into good old fashioned shock, "..What?"

"I'm hot. I'm a SOLDIER. I'm not exactly rich, but I get by. I have a body like those fuckin' whaadaya call 'em? Greek statues 'n shit. I have a pretty big dick, all my teeth and hair, and I don't stink usually. Would you let me fuck you?"

Cloud sputtered and looked to Sephiroth, whose eyes shined in amusement, but said nothing. He swallowed, thinking back to when he had asked the same question of Cam before a date. Perhaps Zack was simply wondering if he looked good.

"I really like your SOLDIER uniform, Zack." Cloud offered with a friendly shrug.

After a few heartbeats of visibly confused silence, Zack repeated, "Would you let me fuck you?"

Cloud flicked his eyes to the side, "Uh. In what.. context?"

Zack hummed thoughtfully, "You could fuck me, I guess. The point is, would you have sex with me? Am I fit to fuck?"

Blue eyes shot to Sephiroth again desperately, who folded his hands on his desk, his face a calm, still lake of amusement.

Cloud nervously licked his lips, "Yeeeah? But um.. I'm sorry.. I'm with.. Seph.."

"He could fuck me, too, he's gorgeous. Hell, let's make it a regular Zack Fair jamboree. The closest I've come to sex in two years is hearing about my gay best friend's first blowjob. I hear you do fantastic work, Cloud. So!" Zack pounded Sephiroth's desk, "I wanna be gay, too! How do I join the club? Lube me up and throw me down the poop chute, I don't give a fuck anymore! I fold! You two can have me! Aerith won't!"

Sephiroth calmly asked over his still folded hands, "What happened?"

Zack crossed his arms and looked like a portrait of a grumpy, pouting child, "We had a fight."

"About?"

Zack crossed his feet in front of him, "I have a desire to become… intimate. She clearly lacks that drive without a formal commitment. We've been together so long. I'm just ready to.. I dunno. Have all of her. So I.. I asked her to marry me."

Sephiroth's eyes popped wide open, "For fuckin' real?"

Zack rubbed his face with both hands, "It was over the phone, and no I didn't plan it and no I don't even have like.. a ring or anything. I meant it, though! But she freaked out.."

"Why?" Sephiroth sputtered with disgust.

"You tell me!" Zack cried.

Cloud looked at both of them in disbelief, two grown men, two of the most powerful figures in the Shin-Ra army, shrugging at each other and wondering aloud if perhaps it was her time of the month.

"You seriously don't get it?" Cloud asked from the window.

Both men looked at him.

"What do you know?" Zack demanded.

Cloud bellowed a sigh, "If you're going to ask a woman to marry you, you have to make a big deal about it, orchestrate something special. You can't just ask that question without a solid game plan, you have to have fucking charts and graphs about your future, your finances, possible children, where you're going to live, when the wedding will take place, and who you're gonna get to design her dress! And never ever ask over the fucking phone, you have to at least be down on one knee! And with a girl like Aerith, you definitely have to have a ring. Geez, you guys!"

Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow, "How do you know all this? You don't even know her that well."

"And you're gay!" Zack pointed out in intoxicated wonder.

Cloud smiled, "I know she sells flowers for a living.. she probably sees romance all day long. She's probably even seen other ladies be proposed to. I'm willing to bet she has a total fantasy about it."

"Ooooh, the little one's right!" Zack looked miserably between the two of them, "So now what do I do?"

"Go to her.." Cloud said dreamily.

"She won't see me!"

"You're drunk, besides." Sephiroth muttered.

"I'm so sorry, Seph. I just can't fucking deal with this shit sober. I get so parched."

"Do like Cloud says. Go home and sort it out." Sephiroth suggested seriously.

"No. I have shit to do."

Sephiroth eyebrow hiked, "Like what?"

"I'm booked all day for training. It's important to me. I have to do it."

"Then go down to the lab and have 'em.. I dunno, wring you out or somethin'. You can't train while you're piss-ass drunk."

Zack sighed and nodded, "..You think she's the one for me?"

Sephiroth leaned on his hand and thought, "She's.. special, I guess."

Zack sucked the side of his cheek, and left without another word, slamming the door behind him.

Cloud cracked open his first magazine and buried his nose in it, but that didn't stop Sephiroth, "Well, well, well.. you would fuck Zacko."

Cloud scowled, "You could have helped me out there!"

Sephiroth smiled widely, "Don't worry. I don't think he'll even remember saying that to you, but if he does, I'm sure he'll apologize."

Cloud nodded, looking to his magazine, tearing at the corner of the page. Then he looked over at Sephiroth, who began to type something with vigor, or perhaps he just typed speedily. Cloud watched the words appear on the screen rapidly.

Sephiroth looked busy, but fuck it, Cloud had a question.

"Did you ever.. have the desire to propose to any of the girls you've been with?"

"No." Sephiroth said, not missing a beat in his work.

"You're not the type?" Cloud asked, leaning against the window and watching Sephiroth's eyes as the flicked back and forth across the screen.

"I don't know if I even am a type," He paused and looked at Cloud, "Why?"

"Just.. I was wondering."

Sephiroth continued working, "I know in your head you think I've had serious relationships but.. those girls were never really real relationships as much as.. burdens. They were to me and I was to them."

Cloud smiled and hummed in disbelief, "You could never burden anyone, pretty."

Sephiroth's eyes shot up at the nickname, then went back to work, "I was just never skilled at being what women wanted, because they all seemed to want someone fulla shit. I like being forward, and I especially like other people that are forward. I like.. someone who lets me know what they want, doesn't make me wonder. I guess that's what type I am."

Cloud kicked his feet a little, "Ohh, I get it! You like to be pursued! You like to know that you're a sexy, desirable man!"

Sephiroth didn't say anything, only smiled.

Cloud scooted to the edge of the windowsill, and leaned forward on his hands, "Sephiroth, you're soo sexy! And soo desirable! But you're my man so remind me to knock out anyone else who tries to tell you so."

"I'd pay a lot of money to see baby knock someone out." Sephiroth chuckled.

"Don't think I can't! My final grade in Hand to Hand, you ask? 'A' plus, Sir!"

"How many knockouts you got?"

Cloud puffed out his chest, "Ten!"

"Good stuff." Sephiroth said sincerely, although it wasn't lost on either of them that it was very much like a parent congratulating an infant on taking a shit, "How many knockouts have you taken?"

Cloud shrugged a shoulder flippantly, "I didn't keep count."

"It didn't say on your report?"

"Maybe.. I didn't read it very hard, I was just glad to have an 'A'."

"Then guess."

Cloud buried his nose in his magazine, creating a perfect picture of academia.

"..Cloud?"

He raised his blue eyes slowly and seriously, as though he were a monk roused from his scholarly studies, "Yes, sir?"

"How many times you been KO'd?" Sephiroth repeated.

After a long sigh of tallying, Cloud said, "Ah, around ..thirty..ish." The exact number on his report was 43.

Sephiroth's eyebrows knitted, "Who the fuck was your coach?"

"..Heller."

Sephiroth frowned, "Was he pinning you with people your size?"

Cloud glanced to the side. There wasn't anyone else his size. The people he usually paired with to spar were either Ben the fat kid, or Johnny the ex-stoner from Bone City. But during the actual graded rounds, the partners were chosen at random. Cloud did his best.. and his grade in the class was excellent, since it was obvious that he was trying hard. But his speed was useless against the bigger boys strength. He could spend the entire round running, but he had to come to blows at some point.

The odd thing was, nobody teased him about his size in class. But, to the unfortunate souls who were beaten by him.. they were teased to no end with taunts of 'shrimp food!!' Cloud wasn't sure how he felt about that. To be well liked, but to be the kiss of death to the self respect of anyone he might be better than?

The fact of the matter was simple. He was an agreeable little sideshow. Maybe too pitiful to tease. Small. Weak.

No! Cloud thought defiantly, Travel-sized and nimble!

After Cloud explained this lengthily and with a thick coating of sugar to his overly concerned beloved, Sephiroth huffed and went angrily back to his work, muttering something about weight classes and height distribution among the courses.

Cloud shoved his face back into his magazine grimly.

And with that, they separated from each other mentally. Sephiroth was busy responding to messages, Cloud was busy reading about concerts he wasn't attending. Every so often the light in the window would shift and catch Sephiroth's eye, and he would glance over to see Cloud shifting to sit differently, or carefully tearing a picture from a magazine. Sometimes Cloud would see a blur of black, and it was Sephiroth moving to scratch the back of his head, or swiveling his chair to reach into drawers.

They were both dispassionate, unanimated, and slightly bored.

But it was real life; the everyday them. The them that they were more often than not.

Sephiroth hadn't before seen Cloud's eyes relaxed and downcast, no sparkle of mischief. And Cloud had never seen Sephiroth lean on his elbows, his chin red from pressing into his palm. He hadn't heard the General's sigh of longing to be outside.

But together they killed the time like two bland, pale versions of themselves. Only once did blue catch green, and send a tiny shockwave of colorful energy. Sephiroth flicked his tongue out in response. They both smiled, then faded apart once again.

It was later in the morning when a knock came to the door.

"Yeah." Sephiroth called, and the sound of his confident voice murdered the heavy silence, causing Cloud to come up out of an open-eyed sleep.

Zack came lumbering in, and collapsed into the gray chair, "Hey, Seph. Ohhh, good morning, Cloud!"

Sephiroth and Cloud caught each other's eyes in humor.

"I'm hung. Over. I have a hangover, I mean." Zack mumbled, wiping at his eyes, "Come train with me."

"Go home." Sephiroth said dismissively.

"Nooo. I wanna train, I got the good room. The one with the new pain program," Zack yawned noisily, "Let's tear it up."

"..You know who passed out on that new program?.." Sephiroth asked quietly, but with an edge of gossip that Cloud had never heard in his voice before.

"Who?!" Zack asked, nipping at the scrap of information.

Sephiroth said a name that Cloud didn't quite understand, and Zack guffawed, "What a pussy! Oh c'mon, Seph! I wanna know what it feels like to get my arm hacked off! Let's do this!"

"You'll let me hack your arm off?"

"If you'll let me hack off yours.." Zack said in a low voice, his voice resonating with echoes of what he must have sounded like as a child, daring the other kids to do perform risky stunts with him.

Sephiroth turned to Cloud, "You okay to hang out for a little while?"

Cloud deflated, as he obviously wasn't invited to the mutilation festivities. He then realized that a first year twat-smear with ten knockouts having the opportunity to watch two first class SOLDIERs spar was too high of a privilege to ever hope for. So, he nodded in understanding, "Sure, I'll be fine."

"Of course he'll be fine! It's like having an attack Chihuahua to guard your office!"

Sephiroth laughed a little too loudly for Cloud's liking, and made a condescending sound of regret at the pouty blue glare he received, "Watch your tone, Zack. Cloud's gonna be a big, bad SOLDIER soon."

Zack nodded, "Fuck yeah, he is. And then we'll all have to watch out for our ankles!"

Sephiroth and Zack laughed merrily together as Cloud tossed magazine husks at them, "Go away! Go hack each other up! Get out!"

When they left in jovial spirits, Cloud sighed, fishing around in his bag for some company. He put his headphones in and let the Mp3 player shuffle, as often times it knew what he wanted to listen to better than he did.

Cloud's mental voice faded as his brain seeped in music. He began to not so much read the magazines, as simply stare at the text and think. He wanted more than anything to make it into SOLDIER, not only for himself now, not only for his family now, but he felt an overpowering need to make Sephiroth proud of him. So Cloud began to go over what he remembered about his courses. Blondie was the soundtrack for recalling important Junish authors of the last century. Freddy Mercury reminded him about the Pythagorean theorem. The Killers droned away in the background of the mnemonic memorization of the steps for disorienting a group of guerillas while on foreign terrain.

Anal Orgasm popped up and stole his attention by presenting to him a feeling, a memory. It was the song he listened to with Cam while he waited for Sephiroth to speak, and Cloud remembered the stomach cramp of that entire seminar with whimsy, watching the angel fight boredom and bicker with Zack on stage.

The music faded, becoming more and more distant. Cloud leaned against the window, the warmth from sitting in a spotlight of sunshine was making his eyelids heavy.

A punk rock siren suddenly shrieked in Cloud's ear and he shot awake, cursing loudly and yanking the bud out. He wiped a layer of sleep-sweat from his forehead, and shifted, realizing the sun was in a much higher position in the sky than it had been moments ago.

He sat up and caught a sweeping movement in his peripheral.

His eyes looked for Sephiroth, but instead found a tall, lanky strawberry blonde in white, standing in front of Sephiroth's desk, hanging on it and chatting on a cell phone.

CHAPTER IMAGES!

Fluffy… owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch14-90902614

This isn't exactly a scene, but its cute (NSFW, duh) -- owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Just-Us-89499628

A/N

1- I've made procrastination history! I spent too much time on ch14, and wrote way too much, so cut off a lot of what's left of this scene to put it in Chapter 15. So, the next chapter is already almost done. The next update will come very soon.

2- Thanks for the reviews, all! It warms my wicked, dark, stone cold heart to know that you're enjoying this story. And don't be shy – if you don't want to leave a review, I'll accept perverse phone calls, nasty emails, and of course – noodz.

3- Recalesce – I thought long and hard about the Hojo giving Seph AIDS scenario. At one point, it was actually going to happen.. but.. that's a level of heavy scariness that I'm not willing to go to, even though its a part of the "reality" I suppose. But, very astute observation. No STDizzles, on the menu though. Fear not.


	15. Sweet Breads

A/N -- I know I left you high and dry last chapter with pretty abrupt cut off, so I included a few of the last sentences as a refresher. Soup's on, eat up!

The music faded, becoming more and more distant. Cloud leaned against the window, the warmth from sitting in a spotlight of sunshine was making his eyelids heavy.

A punk rock siren suddenly shrieked in Cloud's ear and he shot awake, cursing loudly and yanking the bud out. He wiped a layer of sleep-sweat from his forehead, and shifted, realizing the sun was in a much higher position in the sky than it had been moments ago.

He sat up and caught a sweeping movement in his peripheral.

His eyes looked for Sephiroth, but instead found a tall, lanky strawberry blonde in white, standing in front of Sephiroth's desk, hanging on it and chatting on a cell phone.

"Would you believe that there's a little person in Sephiroth's office?"

Cloud stared sleepily as his brain slowly organized a sleepy recognition of the man before him.

The man's father was literally the wealthiest person on Earth. Cloud lived in his namesake building… and humiliatingly enough, had indulged in a brief series of masturbatory spank bank fantasies about him. 

"No, dear, not that sort of little person. He's just rather short." Rufus Shin-Ra clarified to his cell phone mate.

Cloud was experiencing a heavy post-sleep lack of articulation, due in part to a dry throat and also to the fact that he was so poor and unimportant that it seemed likely that Rufus Shin-Ra couldn't even see him. So he opted to simply look Rufus over thoroughly, searching for any sort of resemblance to Sephiroth, as he readily recalled that they shared a last name.

Rufus was an extremely fine featured and pretty sort of man. Sephiroth was far more masculine, and had a different nose entirely. And while Rufus' lips were rather.. kissable.. they were thinner than Sephiroth's. Rufus' eyes were a different shape also, large and open, where Sephiroth's were narrow and soul piercing.

Cloud knew what President Shin-Ra looked like of course, and neither beautiful man looked anything like that fatass. The President tended to be quite red in the face so that he bordered on a purple complexion.. in that double-cheeseburger-away-from-a-heart-attack sort of way. That actually did shine in Rufus through a naturally plum tint to his lips and eyes. Sephiroth however, was fair skinned to a fucking fault, no hint of chronic red facedness looming for him later in life.

..Perhaps it was their late mother they favored?

But no.. Mrs. Shin-Ra was still alive, Cloud even recalled seeing her picture in the school paper. She seemed like a typical, rich, artificially preserved trophy wife. She didn't look like either of the men to Cloud, but then again, her face was probably made entirely of plastic. 

Rufus Shin-Ra listened to whoever he was talking to, then said, "I don't have the faintest idea. He's a tragic mess. God, he's looking right at me."

Cloud was too busy puzzling over Sephiroth's origins to hear what was being said about him right to his face, but he was listening to Rufus' voice. Sephiroth's held an accent and a purring edginess of someone who had worked damn hard in his time, while Rufus' simply dripped with gil signs and non-regional homosexuality.

All things considered.. Cloud couldn't honestly fathom Sephiroth belonging to this man's family. At all. Not from looks, and not from the information Sephiroth had given him. A late mother, and a Turk father; far more humble beginnings than being a son of a bazillionaire.

So why the fuck was his last name Shin-Ra?

"What's your name, little person?"

Upon realizing he had just been spoken to by the pretty Rufus Shin-Ra, Cloud experienced a mental emergency.

He couldn't readily recall his own name.

After a suspiciously lengthy pause, he took a stab at it, "…Hans?"

Rufus' eyes widened into a roll, and he spoke into his cell phone, "Oh, it's not even worth it. So! When does your inheritance drop? Six months!? That old bitch was haggard last time I saw her, are you suggesting she could hang on for six more months? That's certainly optimistic! …Oh, sweetheart. Are you going to cry? …Go cry your eyes out then, and I'll call you later. Of course I care! Kiss kiss!"

Rufus then shut his phone carefully and slid it into his pocket.

He turned again towards Cloud, "Hans, where is the General?"

Cloud was trying to work up enough spit to coat his paper dry throat, "…He's training with Zack."

Rufus huffed, "Jocks. Well, tell him I popped by. What are you, anyways? An assistant? An orphan? What are you and why are you here?"

"I'm …Sephiroth's boyfriend."

Rufus gasped sharply, "Oh, Hans! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Sephiroth is two timing you! He's got a boyfriend named Cloud, also! Oh, I am so sad for you! Are you going to cry?"

Cloud's ears turned red, "Um. I'm actually Cloud."

Rufus leaned forward with suspicion, "He told you to give a false name? Oh my! Is your relationship supposed to be a secret?"

"No. I lied because.. I'm.. weird."

"..So, you're Cloud?"

Cloud shrugged his shoulders in utterly bashful defeat.

"Prove it."

"…How?"

"Identification, obviously."

Cloud dug through his bag and retrieved his wallet, then produced his school badge.

Rufus stared at it for a few moments, his suspicious blue eyes flicking back and forth, "Cloud Strife... the one my Turks won't shut the fuck up about.. Is you?"

Cloud smiled slowly at the scowling President's son.

He huffed and returned the badge, "Sephiroth's opinion of beautiful certainly is.. interesting. What is all this?" Rufus made a swirly finger at Cloud's hair, "And what is all that?" The finger pointed at Cloud's attire, "Must you be told that those hideous trousers don't fit you?"

Cloud's eyes narrowed territorially, "That's because they're Seph's.." then he thought to himself almost rabidly, And they're not hideous, they're fucking Diesel!

Rufus plopped down on the windowsill, "I'm merely stating the obvious. Come here, let me look at you."

He took Cloud's face as though he were an inanimate object, squishing his cheeks together between his cut off gloved fingers and pulling him close enough that Cloud could smell the tasty, spearmint flavored air inside Rufus' mouth. But it was his steel blue eyes Cloud was most interested in. He couldn't help but gaze, letting his eyes sink into them. They seemed to go on through to the back of his head, the blues looking like standing pools of bottomless water. Then, suddenly, the blues seemed so shallow it stopped at the skin of his iris.

Rufus finally spoke, "What do you use?"

Cloud's instinctual response was 'Pleasureglide', but he decided to get clarification, "For .. what?"

"Your pores, dear."

"Oh!.. Uh, Clearasil..." Cloud answered with a deep flush, "Exfoliating Acne Protection?"

"Common." Rufus shrugged, "But I can see that its working."

Cloud nodded innocently within Rufus's grip.

He tightened it authoritatively, "I can also see that you're in the sun too much, you're far too tan. You must begin using sun screen! Moisturize heavily to repair the damage, or by the time you're my age, you'll be haggard. And your hands!" Rufus released Cloud's face and took up one of his hands, bending it daintily at the wrist. He then produced a pack of emery boards from his breast pocket, and snapped one off.

Cloud's eyebrows popped up when he realized he was about to be manicured, "Oh, you don't have to – "

"Silence! You need all the help you can get, and I'm trying to fix my karma." Rufus began to critically assess Cloud's hands, wondering where to begin.

Cloud's mouth became a shameful line, "I can't help it. I live in mud. I can't get it out of my hair, either."

"I wasn't going to be rude and point it out or anything." Rufus griped, his eyes giving an unsavory glance at Cloud's shooting spikes of hair that were unwashed, and might as well have been unbrushed, "You should be using a strong clarifying shampoo."

Cloud wished he had a notepad to write all this down, enviously eyeing Rufus' perfectly shining strawberry blonde tresses, "…What do you use?"

"The blood of virgins."

Cloud's eyebrows popped up before he gave a shaky little laugh.

Rufus stared at him with a strange smile, never pausing in his filing of Cloud's small thumb nail, "..Am I too late to collect from you?"

Bright heat flashed across Cloud's face as he again laughed humorlessly, shifting on the windowsill.

"You should relax." Rufus then suggested, "You're trying to be sweet, and I know it's all bullshit, especially if Mr. Sephiroth is interested in you. He surrounds himself with people that emit attitude. Therefore, you must always speak your mind, or else be lost in the shuffle and discarded."

"..I'm trying." Cloud protested softly.

Rufus nodded, patting his hand while tutting, "I've just said something that borders on the inappropriate. You weren't expecting it, and it obviously made you uncomfortable. If I were you, I would have put me in my place in some sort of unexpected way. So let's try this again.." Rufus' nail filing slowed until it became somewhat suggestive, "…Am I too late to collect from you, you tempting little stack of schoolboy trash?"

Cloud looked down at their hands for a moment, then became privately shocked that his own was the more masculine of the two.

He wasn't sure why, but that told him that he had nothing at all to fear.

And so, looking back up into Rufus' so very deep and so terribly shallow eyes, Cloud smiled, "…I'm on my period. You can collect that."

When Rufus' professionally tweezed eyebrows shot up into his hairline, Cloud crumbled to pieces, guffawing the excess anxiety right out of his system.

Rufus dramatically balked, then recovered and chuckled along in apparent delight, "You're the most unsavory, filthy little troll I've ever encountered!"

"Then stop leching on me!" Cloud roared, snatching his hand back.

Rufus yanked it back and continued his work, "Don't flatter yourself! I'm merely helping you to look presentable."

Cloud blurted more laughter and lifted his eyes, "I don't normally look so tragic, you know."

"Mm-hm." Rufus hummed in blatant disbelief.

"No, really! I guess I sort of let it go for today.. because I'm.."

"Suffering the fatigue of training to become one of my slaves?" Rufus suggested with a smile that would have been terribly arrogant if not for the blues of his eyes sinking to a friendly depth.

"No.." Cloud said slowly, searching until he found what he was looking for and sharing it with a breath of positive energy, ".. happy!"

"Happy?" Rufus spat, taking a pause in his filing, "How would happiness breed ill grooming habits?"

Cloud shrugged, "Like.. maybe its okay to look like a hot mess once in a while, because the person you're with won't care one way or the other. You know?"

"No." Rufus said bluntly. He was spotless.

Cloud then shrugged, and after a moment of silence, ventured, "You know what? At school, I live in your building!"

This seemed to perk Rufus Shin-Ra right up, "Do you! It is by far the most fabulous, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes! Did you design it yourself?"

Rufus turned up his nose, "I don't dodesign, I just wear it. Your boyfriend did it."

Cloud's eyes widened, "..He did?"

"You didn't know? He behind the revamping of the dormitory buildings last year. They were terribly drab, so much beige it would kill you. Maintenance was planning to slap a fresh coat ugly to cover up the old ugly, but Sephiroth stepped in and insisted upon fabulocity. And then they all seemed shocked when he came out of the closet. Idiots."

Cloud laughed a little bit, picturing Sephiroth putting his big, sexy foot down on such a random little issue. Then he recalled the interior design magazines in Sephiroth's bathroom. Sephiroth.. bubble baths.. magazines.. maybe it was a hobby.. a secret passion!

Cloud was stricken with so many questions he didn't know where to begin, "You knew Sephiroth when he was straight? How long have you known him? How did you meet?"

"He was never straight; Perhaps three years; and I'm not exactly certain when I came into his acquaintance. Probably when he held enough importance to have his presence called to the military staff meetings."

Well, that ruled out Sephiroth and Rufus' possible familial connection. Cloud was almost saddened by that, he would have liked to be someday related to Rufus and ensure a lifetime of witty put downs and lisped banter.

Cloud instead geared up for more interrogation, "Tell me an embarrassing story about Seph!"

Rufus smiled broadly, and it was a good look on him, "Do I strike you as a nay saying gossip?"

"Fuck yeah!"

"Apologies; I am just not that kind of girl. At least not before a few drinks, and it's a tad early for that."

Cloud sighed, backing off with slight disappointment. Disappointment that Rufus was choosing not to share what juice he obviously knew, and disappointment that he felt the need to ask at all. Sephiroth held things back, Cloud just knew it.

It was beginning to bother him.

He supposed it was natural for some people to keep some things back about themselves.. the depths of their being. Cloud then realized with a hard slump that Sephiroth surely knew everything there was to know about him by now. Preferences, humorous stories, the tale of his short life, the boring narrative of his day-to-day ... he didn't keep any secret, hidden depths; daily phone calls saw to that.

Cloud had readily offered every single detail of his being.

Maybe that's the problem.. Cloud pondered, Maybe I just need to shut up and listen.

Cloud smiled, decided that's exactly what he would do, "I just wonder about stuff sometimes."

"He's a difficult person to become close to.. unless you happen to be a lesbian. Frankly, I don't have the drive to put forth any effort, as I have my own hags to tend to. But, I do know this from firsthand experience," Rufus offered, "There is nothing he cannot do, and he has already done much for everyone at this company."

"..Like what?" Cloud prodded.

"Anything. Everything. He's always working on some sort of cause, be it the queer eyeing of the dorms, or the freeing of little caged creatures in the labs. He's a do gooder. And a bit nosey, if you ask me! He helps everyone.. especially when you don't want him to.."

Cloud tilted his head a little, "..Firsthand experience?"

Rufus gave a smile of obvious secrecy, but said, "Even I have inadvertently called upon Sephiroth's powers of persuasion."

Cloud grinned and shook his head, "He's wonderful. Makes me wonder what he sees in me."

"You're not the only one!" Rufus huffed.

"Jealous?" Cloud asked with raised eyebrows, giggling in delight when Rufus balked in offense.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Thing! I certainly am not jealous of a bleached blonde midget swimming in hideous big and tall jeans! You have no class and no ass!"

"No class maybe, but I do so have an ass – and Sephiroth loves it!"

"It would not take much to compel me to vomit all over your face."

Cloud giggled uncontrollably for several moments, and the sound infected even Rufus Shin-Ra to join in.

"Never leave Sephiroth." Rufus suddenly commanded, returning to pushing back cuticles and buffing the pinks of Cloud's nails, "His looks are a bit rough around the edges, to put it nicely. But he is rather exotic… from certain angles in certain lighting. And he's got a little bit of money, and that's a big plus!"

Cloud almost gaped, hardly believing Rufus was trying to sell him on Sephiroth's outstanding physical qualities, "I don't give a shit about his money. At all. Seph is a fucking dream come true!"

Rufus patted his hand before taking up the next one, "I believe that you believe that. Now, you must focus on keeping pretty and limbering up. Do whatever it takes to keep Sephiroth. You must never leave him."

Cloud couldn't help but inquire, "Why do you say that?"

Rufus stopped filing and put a finger to his lips in thought, then burst into motion, "Alright. There is a certain individual who is employed here, and this man has a very large 'something' for your boyfriend. Always has. Now, I hate this individual. I realize that hate is a very strong word, and I do mean it with every fiber of my being. I hate him. If you stay with Sephiroth and continue to enamor him the way you've been managing to do, it will surely destroy this man from the inside out. And I must witness that."

Cloud bit his lip. Competition.

"Is this person.. good looking?"

Rufus stopped filing and his eyes become that bottomless blue, "As much as it pains me to say so, he's .. got his act together. Tight. But of course, I hate him."

Cloud wasn't sure, but he could have sworn he heard something deeper in that scathing statement. Something that hinted at Rufus not hating this person at all, "..What's his name?"

"Oh, I can't bear to utter it. It burns."

"Try." Cloud prodded.

Rufus sighed, "His name… is Satan."

"No, really." Cloud whined softly.

"Beelzebub."

"C'mon, for real." Cloud whined again.

Rufus hissed, "Genesis."

"For reeeal!" Cloud begged.

Rufus blinked, "For real. His name is Genesis."

Cloud blinked, "Oh. Well, what does he look like? So I can smack his shit up when I see him come near Seph, of course."

"Dogshit formed to the shape of a gorgeous man."

Cloud let himself laugh at that, and Rufus also indulged in a chuckle, tugging on his long fingers, "You have quite a lovely little braying donkey laugh, Cloud."

A compliment? As backhanded as it was, Cloud was stunned and amazed. He was also stunned and amazed that never in his life had he the opportunity to meet a greater faggot than himself. He felt like a mere satellite orbiting Rufus Shin-Ra's fabulocity. Rufus Shin-Ra made him feel absolutely butch in comparison to his ideal cleanliness and quick witted bitchiness. It felt.. kinda good.

"Can you be more specific in regards to the dogshit?"

Rufus sighed and straightened up, "About my height, about my age. SOLDIER. Wears red leather because he's a drag queen. Similar style uniform as your Sephiroth, because he's got no originality.." Rufus' voice softened a bit, "Hair.. the color of baked cinnamon apples drizzled with caramel. It frames his face like his," Rufus vogued, "..and it flips at the ends. What product he uses to accomplish that look puzzles me because it's so stiff and precise, and yet so …volumous."

Cloud's eyebrow hiked.

"And eyes.. eyes that are an oceanic teal.."

"..Isn't that blue?"

"No. Oceanic teal. It's not the same."

Oh, Rufus Shin-Ra had it bad. Cloud shook his head a little, hoping he himself wasn't thispathetic! Cam would have had to break it to Cloud harshly : he was.

"Not perfect, but passable." Rufus finally declared, flicking the used emery board into Sephiroth's trash can and giving Cloud his hand back after blowing all the crusty nail debris off of it.

Cloud barely had time to gaze in wonder of the newly buffed and polished pinks of his nails before Rufus was pulling on his wrist, "Come."

"Where?"

"We must find Sephiroth."

"..Why?"

"Because we must." Rufus sighed, "If he's training, that mouth breathing Genesis won't be far. And I need to absorb the look on his face when he finally meets the General's oh so beautiful man-boy!"

Cloud turned his nose up, but was yanked upright by the arm before he could get lippy.

Rufus tugged the slightly unwilling Cloud out of Sephiroth's office, and then they were strolling.

"You're not ugly." Rufus told him as they turned a corner and Cloud ended up in front of him, "But please do something about the back of your head. I feel that if I were mere inches shorter, my eyes would be gouged out."

Rufus then brushed in front of him with a flourishing swirl of his spotless white coat and put a bit more punch in his step.

Cloud snorted, "Didn't you ever hear what they say about white after Labor Day?"

"Nice try, but you forget that I am The Queen. I will do as I wish."

Cloud couldn't argue with that, "Well, if you're The Queen, what am I?"

"I must admit, your powers are quite unique, if a bit undeveloped, yet. But someday, I think you shall earn the title of Grand Duchess."

Cloud laughed, very much the lovely donkey bray, "Oh! What's Seph, then?"

"Full title, or the condensed version?"

"Full title!"

"Leather Lord : His Royal Butchy-Pants."

Cloud was beside himself, "Oh! Who else is gay around here?"

"As they say everyone is a little gay.."

Cloud followed Rufus' strut to the elevators where a woman in an extremely small, red dress stepped off.

She stopped for a brief, dishy conversation with Rufus. Cloud didn't know what sort of shoes she wore or what her face looked like, all he saw at his direct eye level were round, perfectly shaped, utterly real tits. He couldn't help but stare as they bounced away, not out of any sort of sexual attraction, but out of a reverent awe of a female body part that echoed in his very genetic code, sewn in closely next to his homosexuality.

Sometimes, only sometimes... Cloud wished he had tits, too. And if he were the proud owner of a meat rack, he wanted them to be exactly like that.

But since he did not and never would, he allowed himself a brief fantasy in the back of his mind, seeing himself politely requesting to be allowed to sample her wares. When she gave her consent, he took two great handfuls and gave a good, firm squeeze. They squeaked. The End.

When they reached their elevation destination, the doors opened to reveal a long hallway that employed a Star Trek sort of décor. Cloud slipped out of the expected motion sickness and right into the role of the gawking tourist, shamelessly staring at the automatic, metal doorways and the rugged SOLDIERs who came in and out of them.

Rufus led him to a large door tucked away in a corridor that required several clearance swipes of his keycard. Cloud's instinct was to make himself small and unnoticeable, but having his wrist held by Rufus Shin-Ra made that quite impossible.

Oh well, they might as well meet the Grand Duchess now, Cloud mentally sighed.

Some things never changed, and him being a laughing stock was one of them. But some things do change, and Cloud looked to the future with a swell of excitement for a time when he would actually belong in these hallways, as a fully grown man.. as a SOLDIER.

It'll happen.. Cloud thought to himself, every pore vibrating with sincerity and surety, I'm gonna make it happen. 

When the final door opened, Cloud's brain began tittering with all sorts of electrons, most of them telling him that he did not belong here and to flee immediately. He most definitely would have if Rufus were not holding his hand firmly, strolling in as if he owned the place. He did, after all.

The SOLDIERs littering the training room were all first class. There were a few seconds, as Cloud could see from their belts, but they were respectfully standing off to the side. Reverently, perhaps.

Sephiroth was fighting. By the feel of the room, by the attitude of the men there, he might as well have been preaching.

Cloud fought to keep still, to keep a cool head. He took a quick series of shallow breaths, inadvertently clutching Rufus' hand like a child.

It didn't matter to Cloud that Sephiroth was shirtless, or that he was sweaty and panting, or that he was actually wielding the legendary Masamune, or that his hair was following his movements like a silver tail of liquid sex.

..Sephiroth was hurt. Badly.

All Cloud could focus on was the jarringly red blood pouring from his nose and the several gaping wounds across his chest and arms. The injuries didn't detract from the respect he commanded, but rather seemed to enhance it.

Cloud swallowed a sob as Zack's sword carved into Sephiroth's side. It ripped free with an audible thick ripping pop, followed by a tidal wave of Sephiroth's hot, sweet blood.

Cloud finally looked away from him and to Zack. If Sephiroth looked tore up, Zack looked as though he had just had a fucking house fall on top of him. Cloud noticed with a quivering edge of nausea that Zack's thigh squirted blood with every step he took.

That was a main artery! Did nobody in this fucking place care about first aid?

The General apparently didn't, not even pausing to regard his own damage, only continuing to make wide, graceful, sweeping motions against Zack's choppy, brutal ones. 

Cloud looked up at Rufus, who only watched this with a high brow sort of interest, as though it were some sort of art film. But the ease radiating from the man made Cloud again attempt to calm himself, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.

Especially when Zack slipped in his own blood, and Sephiroth took the opportunity to cut his head off.

He cut Zack's fucking head off!

Cloud fell to pieces inside, and shoved his face against the white linen of Rufus' coat.

"Decapitation, Zack." A robotic, calm female voice announced, "One point, Sephiroth."

Cloud slowly raised his eyes to see two of his favorite men in perfect condition.

Sephiroth and Zack.. had been healed. Or rather, the program had ended. No wounds, no blood, no gaping ribbons of torn flesh, no spillage across the ring of guts and identifiable chunks of tissue and matter. He blinked a few times, waiting for gore to come back, but it didn't.

Cloud's body all but went numb with relief as he remembered what the two had said before leaving the office. He was well aware that SOLDIERs used the tool of virtual reality in their training, it was something of sopping wet cadet fantasies; semi-secret, cutting edge technology that stimulated SOLDIER's senses enough to train their muscles without actually risking bodily harm. Cloud hadn't realized that that's what was going on because it was so butt-fucking realistic.. never did he imagine the SOLDIER programs would be such a completely, perfect illusion.

It was so real. Too real. Cloud shuddered against himself.. what if there had been a glitch? What if they were under the impression that the program was running.. but they were actually tearing each other apart!? Surely such a mistake couldn't ever be made.. could it?

What if it did, though? What if it went too far? A cure wouldn't do shit for a decapitation! How would they be able to tell the difference between the perfect illusion and reality, especially if they could feel the illusion?

The men didn't appear to suffer from this particular concern. Instead, they turned away from each other for a quick drink. Zack drank something from a water bottle that may or may not have been water, and Sephiroth took a long pull from a thermos, then handed it back to a SOLDIER standing nearby. 

"Final Round." The femmebot said, "Handicap, Sephiroth."

Cloud's eyes jerked closed of their own volition as a series of large gashes ripped across Sephiroth's skin and oozed redness, harming him before the battle had even begun. It was almost not worth taking the mental notes to relay back to Cam.. it had to be seen to be believed. He could almost hear his best friend now, 'FAWKIN' BULLSHIT!'

Sephiroth again paid no attention to his injuries, only stood in wait for Zack's first move.

Zack attacked, immediately getting a hit on Sephiroth's shoulder, and it seemed even to Cloud's under trained eyes that the General had allowed it. If not by having made the decision to remove his protective shoulder plating, he had certainly allowed it by not moving a muscle to block it. Even Zack seemed a little surprised, taking the slightest of pauses.

Then, Sephiroth shrugged harshly, actually using the friction of Zack's blade in his flesh to throw him off balance.

It was the most hardcore thing Cloud had ever seen in his life.

Zack skittered across the floor before righting himself, then bounced back. When they really went at it and lost themselves in the back and forth game of sword-tag, Cloud heard more of them than he could actually see. There was an insistent clanging, and sometimes a spark off of their weapons. Sometimes a grunt of pain, then a splash of blood. Sometimes it squirted out onto an onlooker, much to everyone's delight.

Then something seemed to happen that was obvious only to the two of them, causing their stalemate to come to an end while they stalked each other around the perimeter, seeming to be searching for an opening. Zack then growled something out to Sephiroth, giving a mocking sort of twirl of his bloody sword, looking like some sort of gruesome baseball player.   
Sephiroth then said something to Zack that caused a murmur of chuckling from the SOLDIERs that were close enough to hear, and Cloud watched the improbably long Masamune spin around in Sephiroth's grip in a careless sort of way.

Zack took whatever bait was cast and made another bold attack, and in two blinks of Cloud's eyes, Sephiroth rendered him separated from his weapon and sprawled out on the floor.

Sephiroth had obviously won, and now the only question now was what would the female robot announce? Decapitation? Mutilation? Cut-in-half-and-pissed-on-ilation?

But then, Zack got up.

Beat down, busted and exhausted, he still had something inside of him that shined with determination. It was something from the end of a long movie, something that wasn't supposed to actually exist in the world, something that needed an Eye of the Tiger caliber theme song. Cloud couldn't put his finger on what it was, but he was suddenly full of nothing but disdain for Aerith.

She should have considered herself lucky to have reigned in such a wielder of positive energy and light.

Spitting out blood and thick red strings of innards and muck, Zack flashed a broad smile that appeared to be missing a few of those perfect white teeth.

Sephiroth grinned from underneath his shaggy strands of silver hair, and he raised his right hand to cover his eyes, calling out in a bored monotone, "5…4…3…"

There was a very brief spatter of manly chuckling while Zack scurried with a deep limp to his sword, seizing it and taking less than a second to prepare himself before throwing a fresh wave of fury at Sephiroth, who deflected all of it.. with his hand still covering his eyes.

"Showoff!" Cloud whispered, barely able to keep any part of his body still. He went to channel a little but of energy into drumming on his thighs, but felt a little tingle of unexpected pleasure. He looked down at himself with a groan at an absurdly obvious erection, free to stand proud and tall due to the looseness of Sephiroth's jeans. 

And it wasn't entirely his fault, energy was infecting the entire room in quite a physical way, a few of the men in the crowd became emblazoned enough from the display to whistle, catcall, and call out the name of the opponent they were rooting for.

"Beat his ass, Sephiroth!" someone bellowed.

Zack made a loud, bloody raspberry in response, still throwing his best at Sephiroth, who finally had enough of showing off and fought him properly, giving him the respect he obviously deserved. Zack was a first class SOLDIER, young, strong, fast, and for a person who was stumbling drunk and volunteering himself as straight bait only hours before, displayed a skill that was honed and formidable. It wasn't simply Cloud's inexperienced awe; Zack was a goddamn incredible fighter.

But Sephiroth?

He was.. Cloud didn't know what Sephiroth was. He wasn't fighting though, that was for sure. He wasn't even training, as he outmatched Zack beyond any sort of learning possibility for himself.

Was Sephiroth playing?

Cloud nodded, drumming the invisible beat of their mock battle, and decided that Sephiroth was most definitely playing. It was quite like watching a happy kitten swat around an indignant insect, all while teaching the other insects how it was done.

Of course, Sephiroth possessed a natural speed, grace, and length of limb that wasn't exactly teachable. But he did stop to breathlessly say things that the other SOLDIERs seemed to understand, nodding their heads in either agreement or awe. Cloud pointedly ignored the comments, as he was a peon without even taking basic sword training yet, the masterful pointers went right over his head.

Maybe someday they wouldn't.

In the tiny part of Cloud's mind that was logical, he readily recalled that Sephiroth had said he wouldn't train him.. but the rest of Cloud had to wonder..

Would he?

"Critical blood loss, Zack." The robot announced, and he swore loudly as the program ended, and they were both back to perfect health, "Sephiroth wins."

As they hopped out of the ring, Cloud brought his hands together a few times, but quickly halted himself when nobody else was nerdy enough to applaud. Instead, two new sparring partners took the floor immediately after their departure, obviously fired up and ready to try out Sephiroth's valuable advice.

But Cloud couldn't help himself, he jumped up and down a little, tugging on Rufus' hand, "That was so fucking cool!"

Rufus only nodded, "Indeed."

Cloud stared at his beloved and Zack, hoping against hope to be noticed, and wasn't let down. Sephiroth's eyes found him immediately, and he gave a small, quirky smile of disbelief as he made his way over.

Cloud didn't open his arms for an embrace, knowing full well that it was neither the time or the place, but he couldn't help but eat Sephiroth up with his eyes and wonder if Sephiroth was as horny after sparring as Cloud sometimes was. Adrenaline, sweat, a pounding pulse.. sometimes male bodies and minds became confused due to their extreme simplicities. And even if Sephiroth wasn't aroused from his match with Zack.. Cloud was dying to tell Sephiroth how turned on he had become just by watching.

"What are you two doin' here?" Sephiroth asked when he finally reached them, almost surprising Cloud by hooking an arm loosely over his shoulder. They weren't close enough to be obscene, but near enough that Cloud could feel the thin layer of dewy sweat sitting on top of Sephiroth's ultra heated skin, and take in his intoxicating scent of delicious baked goods.

Cloud quickly gave a nervous glace around at the room of SOLDIERs. Some eyes were on them, most weren't though, as they were caught up in watching the quickly simmering sparring match in the ring. The eyes that were on them weren't judgmental or even surprised, only curious. It was then that Cloud noticed quite a few other pairs of men in the room that seemed to be a bit more than friendly. Gloved hands were hooked into the backs of pockets, arms rested around shoulders, there was even a hand or two clasped here and there.

Encouraged, Cloud dared to rest a hand on the other side of Sephiroth's waist. The tall General casually leaned into the hold.

He was so content that he almost forgot that he had been asked a question. Cloud opened his mouth to answer, but found that there was no brief way to explain the past half hour of his life.

Luckily, Rufus spoke up for him, "I'm taking your boyfriend for a walk, Sephiroth. He was terribly bored in your office."

Sephiroth gave Cloud a coddling smile, "..He fell asleep? What time is it?"

"It's nearing eleven." Rufus declared gravely, "You haven't fed the poor thing, either. He told me he was famished! Thank God I arrived when I did. He might have piddled on the carpet."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes in Rufus' direction, "What exactly were you doing in my office?"

But it kinda sounded like, 'You better not have touched anything in my office..."

Rufus' eyes couldn't have rolled any farther into the back of his head, "Oh, please! I wasn't even looking for your little ragamuffin. I only popped in to see if you would be interested in accompanying me to the pre-conference call luncheon."

Sephiroth paused, "..Why not skip the call and do the meeting there?"

"Your no-nonsense approach is fine for the military, but we civilized people like calls and luncheons, thank you very much."

"Is there an open bar?" Zack asked, appearing with his arm around Rufus.

Rufus cringed at the contact, "Neanderthal! What the hell do you think of this company?! Of course there's an open bar!"

"Count us in!" Zack cheered.

"Zack.." Sephiroth said, tilting his head a bit.

"Oh.. sorry. Not interested..I'm.. drying out.." Zack grumbled, taking his arm from around Rufus.

Cloud tore himself away from Sephiroth and reached out for the tanned SOLDIER, clasping both of his sweaty hands when he reached back, "Zack! God! I was so scared when I saw you at first! I've never seen anything like that!"

"Me either!" Zack moaned in agreement, "I cried a little. I'm man enough to admit that."

"I would have, too!"

Sephiroth tugged on the back of Cloud's hair, "..You're supposed to have second class clearance to be in here, you know.."

Zack shoved Sephiroth away and put his arms around Cloud protectively, "Don't listen to him! I snuck onto floor 49 when I was a cadet, too!"

"That was a little different." Sephiroth frowned.

"Was not!" Zack argued as the two current sparring partners began to slip around on fresh entrails. 'Disembowelment, Kunsel.' The robot lady announced.

Cloud groaned with a nausea.

"..Still hungry?" Sephiroth asked with a smile.

"Oh, fuck yes I am." Cloud said seriously, going back to his rightful place under Sephiroth's arm, "Please feed me."

Sephiroth wrinkled his nose at Zack, "..Cafeteria?"

Zack shrugged grimly, "I guess. It's sort of late to order something."

"You're all boring me. I'm leaving." Rufus then peered around suspiciously, "..but before I go.. I must say that I can't help but notice the distant lack of body odor in this room. Where's Mr. Rhapsodos?"

Sephiroth smiled a little, "On another continent."

Rufus' shoulders slumped in obvious disappointment, then he straightened back up, "Well, at least I can roam the halls without wondering if I'm going to run into the wicked witch of the East. And I simply don't have time to worry about him, I have a luncheon to organize! I have to figure out where to put Tseng to where he's not directly facing Scarlet, to where she's not directly facing my father, because my mother is going to be there.. ohh. I'm stressed already. Cheerio."

And so, Rufus quickly disappeared in a flurry of white linen.

Zack pouted in longing as he went, "..Open bar.."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"It's.. beautiful." Cloud whispered.

Sephiroth and Zack both looked down at him, "It is?"

The Shin-Ra cafeteria was sparkling and clean and a veritable wonderland of lunchtime fun. There were rows and rows of shiny machines, just waiting to dispense of edible goods at the mere touch of a button. They had everything! A machine for fresh salads, a machine for breakfast fare, a machine for hot meals, a machine for vegetarians, a machine for hardcore junk food, a machine for every sort of beverage imaginable. They even had a specific machine for Jello.

Cloud pressed his hands to it, "Can I have some?"

Sephiroth fed the machine a few gil and punched multiple buttons. After a few whirs, ten little colorful Jello cups came sliding out, each with a little dollop of whipped goodness. Cloud could have wept.

"Damn, it's just Jello." Zack grumbled, rubbing his stomach, "I'll have something more substantial, Seph."

Sephiroth glared at him, "Why are you tellin' me?"

Zack batted his eyes until Sephiroth handed him a gil note. Zack snatched it and stuffed it down his turtleneck for safe keeping.

Cloud giggled, "I need more than Jello, too. What else is good here?"

Sephiroth pointed at the big, manly food machine, "I like the sandwiches. And the pizza. And the pasta. And the chicken.."

Sephiroth rambled on more food options, but Cloud burst when he spied a food he hadn't been expecting to find outside of Nibelheim, "Haggis!?"

The two SOLDIERs peered at the tiny picture of identifiable food on a button neither of them had ever felt the urge to press.

Sephiroth squinted at it, "What the hell is that?"

"I'll give you a bite." Cloud promised as Sephiroth inserted a few gil and bought him a plate of the culinary delight.

Zack fished Sephiroth's money out of his shirt when he finally chose the decidedly Gongagan dish of gourmet beefaroni, and Sephiroth himself chose a traditional Midgarian assortment of fat and carbs in the form of "The Sampler Platter", which consisted of fried cheese, fried chicken, fried okra, and fried fries.

"Fatass." Zack remarked.

They sat with their trays, both SOLDIERs sat safe with their regular favorites, but regarded Cloud's choice with weary eyes.

"Is that a potato?" Sephiroth asked before crunching into his chicken.

"No." Cloud said, and opened it up with his fork. The balloon-like sack split to reveal a mushy, thick stuffing.

"Is that vomit?" Zack guessed.

"Haggis." Cloud corrected in a slightly unpronounceable fashion, and put a heaping forkful to Zack's lips.

They gingerly opened to accept it, and then Zack nodded a little, chewing without fear, "It's pretty.. okay. I guess. It's really different. What is it, exactly?"

"Sheep and cow.. lamb, too I think. Maybe pig, but I doubt it, since its out of a vending machine. Probably some chocobo, too."

Zack stopped chewing, "Cloud.. you just named like eighteen different animals. What's in my mouth?"

"Well, it could be all of those, or just one," Cloud explained before taking a huge bite himself, "Haggis is made from oats and sweet breads."

Zack smiled in relief, "Oh! Sweet breads!"

Sephiroth sputtered and laughed around his cheese stick, "Fuck! Zack! That's like intestines, dude!"

Zack didn't hesitate; he opened his mouth and let whatever was inside fall onto the table in front of him, "Cloud!" He howled, spitting at the floor, "How could you do this to me!?"

Cloud laughed heartily, "Oh whatever! Your beefaroni meat is probably like, 20 cardboard and ants."

Zack frowned, "I'd so much rather not know what I'm eating. Ever."

Sephiroth leaned in towards Cloud, "..I'll try anything."

And the seductive tone was not lost in a conversation about animal innards! Cloud giggled and offered Sephiroth a modest, neat forkful, humming a little when those soft, sensuous lips caught the utensil and sucked the food off slowly.

Zack grimaced at the display, "Don't get too excited there, Seph. It's just chocobo colon."

Sephiroth then leaned on his palm and ate carefully.

"It's fuckin' disgusting." He finally decided, chasing the flavor away with a mouthful of good old fashioned Midgarian grease.

"It's an acquired taste." Cloud said loftily, then pointed his fork at Sephiroth in accusation, "Kind of like your rank-ass pure espresso! I thought I was going to keel over!"

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed, "Wait…what espresso?"

Cloud paused for a long, silent moment, then balked in offense, "Exactly! What espresso? There was absolutely no espresso to be had!"

Sephiroth wasn't so easily fooled, "You drank some of my coffee that day!"

"..I had to make sure it wasn't poisoned!" Cloud squeaked, quickly polishing off his meal and moving on towards the Jello assortment.

When three trays dropped noisily down onto the table, their eyes shot up to find none other than Nurse Rhonda, Julie, and Elena. Cloud's heart skipped a negative little beat. Two out of the three had strapped him to a toilet, and the other's favorite pre-dawn activity was to make him vomit blood.

But they regarded him in a casual, friendly way, then Sephiroth and Zack, except for the now painfully pregnant Julie, who pointed a finger in Zack's face, "No commentary, please. I know that I'm fat."

Zack gurgled on his beefaroni, "I wasn't going to say anything!"

Julie pointed again, "Just.. don't even look at me. I'm in a bad mood. Where's my haggis!?"

Cloud gasped, "You like it, too?"

"Of course I don't, nobody does! I just need a lot of iron, and that's what the good doctors are making me eat. Freaking sadists!"

Rhonda scooted a tray in front of her, "Just put it in your mouth. Give my ears a damn break."

Julie managed to bitch even with her mouth full of assorted intestines, "Listen! You can take a break from screaming at people long enough to come with me to my lab appointments! It's not too much to ask, they're your children, too! At least you don't have to walk around like sumo wrestler and squat over the toilet because it's too hard to get back up. What are you laughing at, Seph? Shut up! And you, blondie! Don't look at me with those.. blue eyes! Don't you people know not to agitate a pregnant woman!?"

Rhonda leaned on her fists and gazed limply at Sephiroth, "..Seph? Favor..?"

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows, sucking chicken out of his teeth.

"..You're going to hate me."

"Then don't ask." He suggested.

She sighed, "Look. You're my little buddy, and I'm saying this nicely because they won't stop hounding me to ask you.. let them do the mako transfusion."

"No." Sephiroth answered, a bit too calmly.

"..Why?"

"Because I don't need it."

Cloud chewing a bit slower, not wanting the sound of his own jaw working to blot out any of this particular conversation. But suddenly, Zack was very interested in Cloud's desert, and began discussing it at great length.

"Jello! Do you know why I love Jello? It's not only a food, it's an experience! Cloud! Tell us about the first time you ate Jello!"

"I don't fucking remember!" Cloud hissed, turning his face back to Sephiroth and Rhonda, who were now murmuring to each other across the table in utter seriousness.

Zack's brows lowered slightly. He knew about Sephiroth what Cloud didn't, and more importantly, that Sephiroth didn't want Cloud to know.

"Look how Jello, like, dances! Wow!" Zack cried, jiggling a cup in front of Cloud's eyes, "What's your favorite Jello color, Cloud?"

"Red!" Cloud hissed again, moving his head to the side to look at Sephiroth with great concern, who seemed to be getting a bit angry.

"Cloud? Cloud!?" Zack inquired seriously, "Jello with whipped cream : Perfect combo? Or overkill, perhaps?"

"Why's he yapping about Jello?" Elena murmured to Julie, who was ignoring everything to focus on her food and everyone else's.

Julie shrugged, snatching a morsel of chicken Sephiroth had neglected to consume, "He's a moron. Hey moron, nobody cares!"

Zack then tapped his fingers and pointed to Julies stomach, "So! Who's the father?"

"Rhonda is!"

Zack tilted his head, "How?"

Julie pinched the bridge of her nose, "We've been through this so many times, Zack Fair. They reversed the genetics on one of Rhonda's eggs, so that it became a sperm. Googly goo, a bunch of scientific words later – I'm pregnant with Rhonda's baby. She's the father!"

"But she's a woman, so she's still a mother! I mean, so are you, but that's still two mothers! There's no father! The little dudes need a guy in their life!" Zack crossed his arms and mentally sat back, having wound her up and was now watching her go.

As expected, Julie began a lesbian rant that drowned out everything else in the cafeteria entirely, "Who says my children need a male father!? Just because Rhonda's female doesn't mean she can't be just as good a father as some brainless penis wielder!"

"But she's a woman!" Zack prodded, "So she's a mother, too!"

"You simple minded man! Oh.. Oh! You've done it now. The kids are pissed."

Everyone felt Julie's stomach and agreed that indeed, her babies were definitely pissed. Fighting three against one, Zack couldn't possibly win, and declared Rhonda the female father.

Cloud then made the mistake of asking this : "..It's possible to turn a sperm into an egg, then?"

Elena leaned in, "..Why do you ask?"

Cloud panicked, "No reason! I was just curious!"

They chattered and bickered until the quiet conversation between Sephiroth and Rhonda dried up and they joined in, Rhonda agreeing happily that the horrendously embarrassed Cloud would make an excellent mother. If Sephiroth had an opinion on the subject, he kept it to himself, simply watching the tables' exchanges with a dulled sort of interest.

Cloud turned to him as soon as their table mate's collective attention was wrapped up in something else, "Hey.. everything okay?"

Sephiroth nodded, pressing his lips between Cloud's eyes, which Cloud returned by tilting his head back to kiss Sephiroth's chin. This quiet, intimate act was followed by a few heartbeats of silence, before the women all made the same noise – something between a coo and a cry for help.

"WAAAAaaaaAAAAWWW!" they said.

"Oh, please." Sephiroth smiled, "You've seen us kiss before."

Elena shook her head, "We have not! We only heard about it!"

"Kiss Cloud!" Julie commanded as if on the bridge of a warship, "We wanna see!"

"Yeah, kiss him." Rhonda agreed softly, her facial expression full of tender apology for whatever had been said moments before. Sephiroth smiled at her in response, and the tightness from their end of the table scattered and dispersed.

"Heeeey, whoah woah!" Zack then barked, elbowing Cloud hard, "I have seen them kiss! And please! Don't get Mustang Sally here started!"

"Shut up, Zack!" Julie sneered, then cooed at Cloud, "Go on! Kiss Seph!"

Cloud was as red as could be. But he couldn't resist his attraction to the idea of kissing his beloved, as it had simply been too long since last their lips met. He turned a little and smiled up at Sephiroth, who didn't move, only followed Cloud's movement with his lidded, amused eyes. Cloud laughed a little before he burst up to press a quick, dry kiss to Sephiroth's slightly unprepared lips.

The ladies clapped as though they were at a golf game, except for Julie, who bemoaned, "That wasn't a real kiss! That was pathetic!"

Sephiroth responded by burrowing a hand into the back of Cloud's hair, and proceeding with what Julie and the rest of society would classify as, a "real" kiss.

Please don't get hard! Cloud prayed to his cock as Sephiroth's tongue snuck past his lips, rubbing at Cloud's until it rolled along with him. Cloud shut his eyes with a silent sigh, enjoying as Sephiroth made his now thoroughly practiced move of sucking at both Cloud's top and bottom lips in turn, then pulling away.

Sephiroth whispered romantically to him, "..You taste like spleen."

"You taste like cheese." Cloud whispered back before diving back in.

"You never kiss me like that anymore." Julie said to Rhonda dryly.

So, Rhonda did.

Elena sighed dreamily, "I need to call Cissnei.."

Zack leaned on his fist, reached into his pocket for his own cell phone. He rolled it in his palm for a few moments, surrounded by public displays of affection, and not knowing the face of the next person he himself would kiss.

Aerith had made things clear earlier in the morning, after Zack had sobered up in the lab. He wasn't in the doghouse, or on probation, or topping any shit lists this time. The opposite; he was free.

He finally flipped it open, and deleted her number.

It was useless, though. He knew it by heart.

He closed the cell phone with a frown that nobody at the table saw. Full of goddamn angst? That wasn't the way to be, ever. He couldn't be sad. He wouldn't be. Ever.

Drinking wasn't an option, so Zack decided to cheer himself up by forcing an abrupt halt to the simmering little makeout session occurring right next to him.

He dumped his cup of ice water over Cloud's head.

The thorough beating he then received from Sephiroth made him laugh, made him hurt, and made him forget. If only for a few minutes.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"You have an interesting job, Mr. General." Cloud smiled, scuttling into Sephiroth's apartment.

The previous couple of hours had consisted of more office work for Sephiroth, a lame attempt of Cloud's to write a thank you letter to his father, and both endeavors ending with both of them declaring, 'Fuck it.' The only real highlight was hearing plenty of Sephiroth's "serious" voice during the conference call. He had to turn his chair to face the wall when he caught Cloud's humor cast eyes.

Sephiroth slammed the door shut and stripped off his coat, tossing it on the floor and stalking Cloud into the living room. "This day was somewhat atypical."

"Well, we're home now.." Cloud pointed out, slowing to a stop in the middle of the room and glancing over his shoulder.

Sephiroth enveloped Cloud in himself, pulling him near and smelling the length of his neck in a way that ignited visions of cave people and crazy animal mating rituals, "I need to fuck you."

"I need you to.." Cloud turned his head up to touch his tongue to Sephiroth's lips, moaning softly as they immediately opened up to swallow him.

He reached back and put his hands on Sephiroth, easily finding silky hair and soft leather. Sephiroth's hands slid up into his still slightly damp hoodie, pulling it slowly up over his chest, his thumbs rubbing over small, hardened nipples. Sephiroth broke the kiss with a tiny grunt to tug the thing over Cloud's head, poofing up his hair. His lips attacked the bare length of Cloud's neck, finding a field of short, edged little blonde tresses in his way.

"You tryin' to grow this out or somethin'?" Sephiroth asked, blowing them out of his mouth.

"Want me to?" Cloud asked over his shoulder.

Sephiroth paused, his hands halfway down the front of Cloud's pants. He then smiled, "..That'd be really sexy, actually.."

Cloud scrunched his nose, "..Would you pull it if it was longer?"

He answered by sinking his hand into it and giving it a possessive little jerk. Cloud's ass pushed heavily back into Sephiroth's leather constricted erection as he rode the wave of the sensation.

"Bed." Sephiroth grunted.

Cloud was beginning to lose himself in the haze of strong arousal, and simply nodding vehemently in open mouthed agreement. However, when Sephiroth scooped him off of his feet from behind, he squirmed away with a low whine. In no mood to play around, Sephiroth snatched Cloud's wrists and threw them around his neck like a feather boa, hauling him up into his arms.

But Cloud was choosing not to cooperate, and immediately unhooked his arms from around Sephiroth's neck, falling to his feet.

"Let me carry you, Seph."

Sephiroth paused, blinked, then chuckled. He then hooked an arm under Cloud's knees and flipped him up into his arms. Cloud kicked and fought until Sephiroth set him down again.

"What's your problem?" he asked, his breath shallow from arousal and a teasing taste of playful battle.

"Let me carry you." Cloud repeated.

Sephiroth's face scrunched with confusion, "..Why?"

"You always carry me."

"..I weigh 250 pounds, Cloud. I'm twice your size.. more than twice your size. You can't."

Cloud didn't even bay an eye at the scale number, and instead crossed his arms, "Let me try."

Sephiroth crossed his arms right back, "No. You're gonna hurt yourself."

Cloud raised his chin, "I bench 120, but I've lifted 180 without a real problem. And you might be double my weight, but you're just lean mass. You'll only feel like 210, at most."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes, but they popped right back open when Cloud added, "And it's not like you haven't been on top of me before.."

Sephiroth smirked, gazing down at Cloud with friendly suspicion. He had actually begun to wonder when this particular scenario would arrive. He picked Cloud up whenever he got the chance, called him 'baby' of all things, and was the one to penetrate during their lovemaking. In the back of Sephiroth's mind, he wondered if Cloud felt somewhat.. emasculated.

But as he stood before Sephiroth in borrowed jeans barely hanging onto his narrow hips, and a gentle, but determined look on his face, Sephiroth realized something very important about his little lover.

Cloud was a man. No question about it.

Granted, he was a young man, and one who let himself be treated like a soft, delicate thing, even reveling in it.. but underneath it all, he had certain needs like any other man.

The most basic of which was to feel like a man.

And if he needed to prove something as small and inconsequential as the ability to lift and carry his larger partner, Sephiroth would goddamn well let him try. Try, fall over, throw his back out... but he would be there to pick up the pieces and kiss them better.

Sephiroth made himself available, "Okay, Strife. Come 'n' get me."

Excitement flared in Cloud's water colored eyes, and he exhaled in half disbelief before he carefully approached Sephiroth, sizing him up. Sephiroth sputtered laughter when Cloud took one of his long, leather clad legs by the knee and put it around his tiny waist. He then bent his knees a little, groping Sephiroth's ass to get a firm grip on him, then straightened up with a heavy groan.

Sephiroth's other foot left the floor.

After a moment of astonishment for both parties passed, Sephiroth threw his arms around Cloud's neck for balance, and Cloud gawked up at the load in his arms as his mouth bloomed into a wide, triumphant grin. He took a few careful steps before breaking into a little trot. Sephiroth laughed softly into his hair, as it was the 'oh shit this is really heavy' run, and prepared himself for the impact into the hardwood floor.

But Cloud didn't topple over, and Sephiroth was soon dumped unceremoniously onto the bed, following along by a pile of thin, quivering limbs.

Cloud popped up to his hands and knees beaming, and huffed, "I did it!"

Sephiroth smiled down at him, "You actually goddamn did.."

He blushed, taking a victory crawl up Sephiroth's long body to reach his lips.

"Seph.." Cloud murmured after a brief kiss, "..How do I take this stuff off of you?"

Sephiroth reached between them and made a show of slowly unsnapping his suspenders, pulling them away from his body so Cloud could see where the hooks were located. He then arched up off the bed to shrug out of them before pulling his SOLDIER belt away from his side and revealing the hidden series of latches underneath, inviting Cloud to try and undo them.

"It's worse than a bra." Cloud muttered as he fumbled with them, which were rather difficult to the inexperienced.

Sephiroth found the comparison quite amusing, and took additional pleasure in the sight of Cloud's pink tongue as it poked from between his lips in concentration. He leaned up to taste it, making Cloud all the more clumsy and uncoordinated.

"Here." Sephiroth finally said when the novelty of watching Cloud struggle wore off. He made quick work of the latches, his fingers bumping into Clouds as he pulled the belt off and away. Cloud's hands skittered across hard, exposed muscle, and found something he had gotten plenty of previous training in removing. He tore at Sephiroth's button and zipper, removing the barrier quickly and then brushing a hand inside, gripping and pulling the hardness there without hesitation. Sephiroth's hips jerked up off of the bed, and Cloud took the opportunity to deftly yank his pants down his thighs, peeling the material away as it clung to Sephiroth's skin, obviously not wanting to leave his beautiful body.

Growling into Cloud's mouth, Sephiroth's fingers restlessly plunged into the back of the loose jeans, pulling them down over the curve of his ass with one good tug. Cloud rolled onto his back to complete his nudification as quickly as possible, kicking the pants off his legs as Sephiroth tugged them down over his feet.

Once they were both successfully naked, Sephiroth dove on top of him like a big kid down a slip n' slide. Cloud laughed merrily at the enthusiastic grin plastered across the General's face, "You'd never have thought you turned me down flat this morning!"

Sephiroth's lips were busy tasting the sweet skin of Cloud's neck, "Didn't turn you down.." he pleaded indulgently, "..just wanna take my time.."

"Nothing wrong with a quickie.." Cloud sighed as Sephiroth's mouth found one of his nipples.

Sephiroth replied by nipping it, wrenching a loud cry from Cloud.

He paused and looked up guiltily, "..Did that hurt?"

"No.. not at all.." Cloud admitted, "I just thought it might."

Sephiroth grinned as he stuck out his tongue in the direction of the other one, his eyes alight with naughty plotting.

"I don't want us to fight, Seph." Cloud blurted suddenly at him.

Sephiroth stopped cold, a stern glare blotting out the playful sparkle in his eyes. He wondered now if Cloud was somehow afraid of him after seeing him spar with Zack. He wouldn't be the first person to think differently of him after seeing a display like that, and it made him almost wild with regret.

He didn't want to lose what they had together.

He shifted up to Cloud's eye level, "..I won't ever lay a hand on you, Cloud."

Cloud's eyes shot open, "No! I don't mean like that.. oh, forget it."

"No. What are you talkin' about?"

Cloud sighed, looking up at the ceiling, "Today I was thinking about Aerith and Zack. How they fought.. seemed like it happens a lot.." Cloud explained softly, his fingers rubbing at Sephiroth's shoulders, "..I meant to say that I don't want that to happen to us. We had a fight already.. sort of. But.. I don't want us to have to fight to work things out."

"Disagreements happen. I know we're gonna do shit that'll piss each other off. We won't always see eye to eye.. well, we never will, if you think about it.."

Cloud squinted an eye up at him.

Sephiroth only smiled, settling down on Cloud and letting him feel his weight because he could handle it, "But what happens with Aerith and Zack won't happen with us. Know why?"

Cloud shook his head.

Sephiroth told him, "Because we talk to each other. Aerith and Zack.. they're good together.. but I know they never really talk."

"You like to talk to me?" Cloud asked quietly.

Sephiroth rested on his elbows next to Cloud's head, "I could talk to you for a hundred million years.. but is it okay if we shut the fuck up, now?"

Cloud bit his lip and tilted his head on the mattress, "Aw, Seph.. did I spoil the mood?"

"Oh, no..." Sephiroth assured, pressing a potent arousal against him.

Cloud swallowed, "Good! Shit.. I don't think I'd be able to stand ruining another night with you."

"You think you ruined last night?"

"Yeah!" Cloud nodded miserably, "It was my dumbass idea to turn the TV on for background noise. We wasted the whole night."

Sephiroth smiled, "This proves it. You only love me for my body."

Cloud's eyes widened, then he bucked under Sephiroth, "That's not what I meant! I just mean.. I need to learn to shut up and get it when I can.."

"You can get it whenever you want it. I toldja. Just tell me if you need me."

"You're ..serious?" Cloud's eyebrows rose in wonder, ".. I can make a bootycall?"

Sephiroth's eyes popped open wide before he rolled off of Cloud, his loud laughter echoing off the high ceiling.

"What?!" Cloud screamed.

"Did you just say 'bootycall'?!" Sephiroth cried out, his humor boiling over.

Cloud blushed bright, "That's what it is, isn't it?"

"But it's.." Sephiroth sniffed a little, "You make it sound so fuckin' proper!"

"Bootycall?" Cloud said with a smile, trying successfully to wring more gorgeous laughter from the man beside him. It sounded like 'boo'ycaww'. He then lowered his eyelids and purred, "…Bootycall.."

Sephiroth paused his laughter and hissed softly, "..How do you do that?"

Cloud smiled, reached his arms straight up to hook around Sephiroth's shoulders, "..Do what?"

"You're so goddamn cute. Then, alluva sudden.. you're so goddamn sexy..

Cloud's face scrunched and he looked ready to retort, but was cut off by a mouth that had had enough of talking.

Sephiroth sucked at Cloud's lips before turning his attention back to his hard little nipples. His tongue danced across the peaked, pinkish tip, and he could actual hear Cloud's heart pounding out the rhythm of anticipation before sharp teeth flashed and nipped. This time there was no fear of pain, and Cloud was awash only in the burning shock of pleasure, gasping with a sharp intake of air.

The tiny gasps turned desperate as Sephiroth's fingers took their sweet time traveling down Cloud's body, detouring often to brush up and down long limbs of tightly wound muscle. He arrived at Cloud's erection, clearly in no hurry as he rubbed his hot palm along the tight, silky skin. He drudged up a low whine out of Cloud when he finally wrapped his fingers around it, gripping it. He worked Cloud over, moving his fist from the honey blonde-haired base to the brightly blushed tip with a toe curling brand of slowness.

All it took was a small hand on Sephiroth's chest and a gentle push for him to stop and look at Cloud. Another nearly weightless push had the powerful man on his back. 

Cloud sat up next to him, wanting only his turn to touch and kiss. He sampled lips, a smooth jaw, a strong collar bone, a wonderfully defined chest. He gripped the hard, large muscles of Sephiroth's arms while his lips felt his pulse pounding in his wrist, then took the time to kiss the pads of every one of his ten long fingers. Cloud then moved to covet Sephiroth's taut lower abdomen with his tongue, detouring off of the chiseled trail to the tops of his thighs.. and while the mission of all of this was to tease Sephiroth.. he found that putting off what the General was now so hungrily bucking his hips for was a bigger tease to himself.

He mentally shrugged at the fact that he'd make a horrible dominatrix, finding no real problem with a natural urge to please his beloved. While his hands made the journey down to feel long thighs, his mouth worked wetly along the underside of Sephiroth's thick cock before lapping and sucking on the rounded head, the abrupt visual sending a tremor up through Sephiroth's body.

Cloud opened his mouth to wrap his lips around him, moving down before pulling back slowly, looking up at Sephiroth's eyes as he let his lips linger and brush over the thrumming flesh.

Sephiroth saw an odd little blue electric flicker in Cloud's eyes before took a breath and lowered his mouth again.

Slowly and purposefully, he took Sephiroth down his throat, inch by inch. He worked his way down entirely past his zone of comfort, his small nose burrowing into silver fuzz.

Sephiroth's jaw dropped, and he made the sort of anguished noise one makes when they drop a plate, "Oh, shit!"

Cloud clamped his eyes shut, literally choking down a gale of laughter before backpeddling quickly up, and coughing out, "Seeeph! Don't make me laugh when I'm trying to deep throat you!"

Sephiroth face went completely blank, "..I can be totally not funny."

This only made Cloud laugh harder, but after a few moments of recovery, he returned eagerly to his unfinished business. Sephiroth made a true effort to hold himself still and keep quiet, watching in silent fascination as Cloud took it all, then tilted his head back with slightly hallowed cheeks, only to suck his way back down to the very bottom again.

Sephiroth felt himself plunging fast towards a hard, abrupt release, and knowing Cloud would understand, ran his fingers through his pale yellow hair to push him gently away, then immediately pull him near. With wet, reddened lips, Cloud climbed atop him in his slightly graceful, slightly clumsy way, once again reminding Sephiroth very much of a sleepy kitten. Only instead of napping, this one was mounting up.

Cloud grinded his bottom restlessly against Sephiroth, "..I've been thinking about this all day.."

"We need uh.." Sephiroth narrowed his eyes in thought, then began making a slightly obscene sort of gesture of squirting an invisible tube, "..Ya know?"

Cloud forgave Sephiroth's faulty memory concerning the brand name of their lubricant, and gave him one more suggestive little bounce before sitting up, "I left it here last time.. did you put it away?"

He pulled open Sephiroth's bedside drawer before he could be stopped.

Cloud blinked at what he found, then slid the drawer quickly shut.

He looked at Sephiroth, who actually blushed. For real, blushed.

After a moment of stunned silence, Cloud murmured, "..Can I ..look in that drawer?"

Sephiroth's eyes widened in humiliated disbelief, "..I guess."

Cloud slowly moved his hand to the drawer again and tenderly slid it open.

He pulled out the tube of Pleasureglide that he had left last week. And then, a long, bright pink dildo.

"Shut da fuck up!" Sephiroth commanded in bad impersonation of his own confident self, as Cloud held the dildo in one hand, and held his stomach with the other, doubled over on top of Sephiroth with howling laughter until he was desperate for air.

"What!? What!?" Was all Cloud could manage. Sephiroth responded by snatching it away and hurling it across the room.

Unfortunately for him, it began to vibrate and bounce along on the hardwood.

Cloud was past laughter and began to simply scream hysterically, kicking and rolling on the bed like a man possessed.

Sephiroth roughly shoved him aside, stalking angrily over to the buzzing contraption, yanking it up off the floor and fumbling with it until it went silent.

He turned back to Cloud with narrow eyes, prepared to face his wrath. To his surprise, Cloud was actually still hard, perhaps even harder than before. He was lying on his side and beaming a dirty smile.

"Come baaaack.." He cooed.

"Fuck yoooou." Sephiroth echoed with a scowl.

Cloud gave him a condescending 'tsk' and went up on his knees, puckering his lips out at him and blinking in wait. After a moment of heavy angst, Sephiroth went back to the bed and touched his lips to Cloud's. 

"I just want to know.." Cloud said slowly and calmly, "Why. Is it .. pink?"

Sephiroth's eyes turned into two glowing neon slits, but he replied as calmly, "Because the only other color was like, skin toned. And there's somethin' weird about that."

Once Cloud had come off of his exhausting, roller coaster ride of a guffaw, he sighed, wiped his face of tears, and turned onto his side where Sephiroth was lying moodily with his arms crossed.

Cloud propped up on his fist and swung a leg over onto Sephiroth, "I laugh because I love you."

"I can see that." Sephiroth hissed.

Cloud actually frowned a little, and tugged on Sephiroth's hips with his leg, "I'm sorry. It was just.. unexpected. And.. fucking pink."

He scowled harder when Cloud giggled softly again in a mirrored echo of his previous minutes long tirade of laughter, rubbing at his sore stomach muscles. Sephiroth grumbled moodily, "Yeah, well.. whatever."

Cloud hugged one of Sephiroth's crossed arms, "..Why do you have it?"

"Can we not talk about it?"

He kissed Sephiroth's bicep and purred, "This is just the universe getting you back, you know."

"What?"

"Remember snooping and finding my lube?"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes, "That was no big fuckin' deal."

Cloud mounted him again, "What about me humiliating myself in front of the entire school?"

Sephiroth smirked a little around the edges, "That was just cute."

"How about all the times you've scared me and made me jump? Or when I had to tell two lesbian commandos that I was a virgin? Or how about when I had a total woody while watching your ass on the way to the copy room? Eh? Eh?"

A little smile began to bloom on Sephiroth's mouth, but he twisted it to the side with a sigh.

Cloud bounced on him, "I'd say it's about goddamn time you blushed for me!"

"It was hot in here." Sephiroth argued with no real conviction.

Cloud rolled his eyes and leaned down, lowering his voice to a more serious tone, "Out of all the humiliating bullshit that's happened to me in front of you.. did any of it ever make you think less of me?"

"No." Sephiroth said honestly.

Cloud smiled as if that answer was a slight relief, "Well.. Even though you own a pink dildo.. I love you."

One of Sephiroth's silver eyebrows arched, but he said nothing.

"I do love you.." Cloud told him again, brushing their noses, "..I'm in love with you."

"Hey.." Sephiroth said, and gently took Cloud's face, returning the phrase with his eyes and energy. Their lips met briefly, before Sephiroth pulled away and sighed, rolling his eyes as folded his hands behind his head, "I got the damn thing because.. I wanted to know how it felt. Before I actually did it."

Cloud stopped smiling and sat up a little, "..For me..?"

"I guess."

Cloud suddenly felt horrible and childish for having laughed at all. Even during their slightly tentative first time, Sephiroth seemed to have an idea of just where to hit to make him feel good, canning his pleasured eagerness in favor of a gentle touch. During their slightly more skilled second time, even more so.

Cloud laid his head on Sephiroth's shoulder, kissing his chest softly, "Seph.. that's the most weirdly romantic thing I've ever heard.. thank you."

Sephiroth smirked at the gratitude, "Mm. Don't thank me. I just.. ya know –"

"Gotta be the best?"

"God.." Sephiroth groaned with dark humor, "..you just finished my sentence."

They smiled at each other for a moment, both of them wanting to crawl inside the other, as skin to skin contact didn't seem to get them close enough to each other. 

"Hey, Seph?.." Cloud said after the lovely moment of mental union. He leaned over Sephiroth's waist, reaching out off of the bed, rolling the hot pink phallus towards him with his fingertips, then picking it up.

Sephiroth groaned, attempting to swipe it back, "Can we just forget about this for fuck's sake?"

Cloud rolled over on top of it, "No way."

"Cloud. Let go." Sephiroth grumbled, trying to snake his fingers underneath Cloud to retrieve his shameful possession.

"Why should I?" Cloud asked, wiggling his ass to momentarily distract Sephiroth while he got a better grip on it, "I should be allowed access to your sex toy."

"Don't say 'sex toy'! I only used it like once or twice." Seven times was the exact number.

"Let me try it."

"What!? Why?"

"You won't be embarrassed anymore," Cloud stated, turning his face to look up at Sephiroth in seriousness, "..If I use it too.. it'll be ours."

Sephiroth blinked, seeming to consider that. He then reluctantly rolled off of Cloud's back and onto his side with a coolly vacant disinterest.

Cloud smiled and rolled over as well, leaning up against the pillows. He then began slapping the thing against his palm like a faulty flashlight, trying to turn it on.

Sephiroth chuckled softly when Cloud squinted one eye and looked at it like a kaleidoscope, before sighing blithely, "..Twist it."

Cloud made a bright facial expression of 'Ohhh' and did just that. The thing came to life with such a ferocious abruptness he dropped it. When it wiggled on the bed away from him, he bravely picked it up and tamed it by twisting it softly in the opposite direction. When it was manageable, he gave Sephiroth a hopeful glance, "Is this a good.. um.. velocity?"

Sephiroth chuckled again, figuring it wasn't going to be the last time before this bullshit was over, "I never actually had it on."

Cloud then turned it off with wide, curious eyes, spreading his legs haphazardly, "Well, here goes!"

Sephiroth almost choked on his tongue when Cloud attempted to press the head of the dildo into his tiny, dry opening, "Whoah! Hey! You tryin' to kill yourself?"

Cloud blinked calmly up at him from the pillows, "Ohhh, yeah. I forgot.."

Like hell. He just wanted to make sure the General was paying attention.

He was rewarded by a loud sigh from Sephiroth, who sat and dragging Cloud by his thighs into his lap, shifting with him until the short blonde laid down in front of him with his legs spread around his hips.

Cloud blushed a bit at being spread wide open in broad daylight like a lunch menu, and ventured to ask, ".. You like how this looks?"

Sephiroth had to tear his eyes away to make contact with Cloud's, ".. Fuck yeah."

Cloud giggled softly at the emphatic answer, then felt above his head on the folded over, rumpled sheets for the lube. Sephiroth leaned over and grabbed it, and put it in his hand.

After popping open the top and squeezing a little on his fingers, Cloud moved them down between his legs a bit uncertainly.

"You really haven't done this to yourself, have you?" Sephiroth asked in slight disbelief.

"No.." Cloud said with closed eyes, already rubbing his fingers at the unfamiliar terrain, ".. help?"

Sephiroth was only too glad. He guided Cloud to his opening, positioning his middle finger carefully, "Push a little.." He instructed.

Cloud sunk his finger in slowly, and finding resistance against himself, took a long breath to calm down. He was nervous as much as he was anxious, and double that considering the fact he had an eagerly rapt audience.

"More.." Sephiroth encouraged, his thumbs tracing around Cloud's slightly puckered perimeter, ".. and curve your finger back."

Cloud gasped a little at what he immediately found. Sephiroth was a pro! He stilled his finger and moved it out a little, then back in, letting up off of his button as soon as he found it again.

"How do you like it touched?" Sephiroth asked after sensing a hesitance from Cloud.

"I don't know. It's.. weird."

"But it feels good?.." Sephiroth asked cautiously.

Cloud nodded up at him against the mattress, "Yeah, but almost like.. too good."

Sephiroth tilted his head a bit, "Too good?"

Cloud nodded again, and Sephiroth was slightly mesmerized by the way his long throat flexed as he swallowed before saying, "It's like.. too much with fingers. It feels too sharp. I like it better when it isn't so.. concentrated, I guess. When it's…" Cloud opened his eyes, "..your.."

He actually ran into great difficulty in naming that part of Sephiroth's anatomy, and instead continued, "..You. I feels really good when its you."

Sephiroth's brain lit on fire with that information. He took into account almost gratefully that Cloud's prostate must have been extremely sensitive. Sephiroth's, he had come to find after a little self exploration, was not. He watched in fascination as Cloud slid in another long finger, and in realizing that rubbing that spot was unavoidable with two, pulled it back out. 

Cloud jumped when he felt something nudging in to join his finger. He looked down between his legs to see Sephiroth's palm cupped over his, but his bright green eyes fixed on his own.

Sephiroth rubbed his finger alongside Cloud's, pushing in to gently massage him with an edge of mercilessness that sent shock after nearly painful shock through Cloud's body. 

"Seph!" Cloud half grunted, half giggled, "Get out of there!"

"You aren't doin' it right, though.." Sephiroth smiled, driving in another digit and forcing Cloud to dig his head into pillows and cry out in shocked agony.

"Okay okay okay okay!" Cloud declared after another dreadfully pleasurable twist of Sephiroth's fingers, pulling out of himself and pushing Sephiroth's hand away as well.

Sephiroth tsked, leaning down over him to kiss his face apologetically. Cloud nipped his bottom lip in playful warning, and Sephiroth treated him to a brief little mock-whimper.

Cloud turned his head away from the kiss to search for the candy colored dildo, smiling in near embarrassment as he spread a thin coating of lubricant on it.

Sephiroth watched in silence as the artificial cock breached his boyfriend.

Cloud pushed it in and out in a hesitant, slow rhythm, finding a shocking difference between it and Sephiroth. It was cold. When Sephiroth fucked him, his body was so physically hot that he had gotten the sensation of melting, especially in the shower where hot water also abounded. But this thing was quite unimpressive in that regard, as he couldn't actually enjoy it and get past the feeling that it was just a thing.

Once that had been established in his mind, Cloud decided that there was only one thing the piece of crap could do that Sephiroth couldn't.. so he gave it a very small twist, and from within, a gentle purring motor could be heard. 

His eyes shot open into two round, blue circles.

Sephiroth's eyebrows raised, "You okay?"

Cloud's voice cracked a little, "Ye-eah."

"Need help?"

Cloud was frozen in shock, "..Maybe."

Sephiroth gave it a gentle tug and slid it out, sighing as he twisted it off. Then, to Cloud's surprise, he pushed it right back in, burrowing it inside of Cloud until he forced out a little shuddering moan. Then, Sephiroth twisted it right back on.

"Seph!" Cloud cried, his hands clutching at Sephiroth's thighs.

Sephiroth took one of them and put it at the base of the dildo, "Go ahead."

Cloud was terrified to move it. He had meant to just give it a go, stick it in, pull it out, then that would be that. But this felt good. This was full on masturbating in front of Sephiroth is what this was.

But he felt that if he didn't move it, he would surely die, so he worked it casually, swallowing his moans and staring at the ceiling with tiny, hesitant movements.

"Feelin' shy or somethin'?" Sephiroth bluntly asked.

"Kind of." Cloud whispered, working his jaw to keep a moan from slipping past his lips.

"I thought the whole point of this was to not be."

"I'm an idiot."

Instead of laughing or retorting with his usual sarcasm, Sephiroth softly asked, "Will this help?"

Cloud opened his eyes curiously, and watched as Sephiroth sat back with his eyes settled between Cloud's legs. In an utterly shameless fashion, he began to slowly work his erection, pulling the skin tight as his fist moved to the base, then back up again. He somehow made an erotic show of finding the lube with one hand, smearing a little across his blushed head, and working it down over himself in slow, heavy movements.

Sephiroth : Jerking off.

Cloud : Hypnotized.

He watched the display Sephiroth gave him, not at all thinking about how it might look with him working the gently vibrating toy inside himself. When his mind began to picture Sephiroth's cock inside him, wishing for it, he closed his eyes and bravely pulled the substitute out of himself. When he twisted it off, Sephiroth was already scooping him off the bed and pulling up upright, lying back with a graceful settling of limbs.

Now with a little bit of experience finding his opening, Cloud didn't struggle or hesitate in taking Sephiroth's cock and positioning himself over it.

Sephiroth opened his mouth to say something, but Cloud began to sink down on top of it, and whatever words he had turned into a low moan.

The vibrations had greatly sensitized Cloud, and when Sephiroth's cock nudged into him, filling him, he made soft, strained sounds of wonder and disbelief. The first and second time of having Sephiroth had been laced with a terrible stinging ache. But now, it was just good. The pain, the stretching, the all-consuming quake of pleasure deep inside. To Cloud, it was perfect.

Sephiroth fought with men, trained with men, lived in shit with men, and had thus seen more naked men than a porn director. But in all the thousands of them in his army, he had never seen one who could move like Cloud. At least not in public. It wasn't a physical anomaly, as Sephiroth had wondered upon first seeing Cloud walk.

Cloud just really liked to move his ass.

Sephiroth had been hoping and praying that those hips wouldn't somehow become stiff and hesitant in this position, and he was not disappointed. Cloud didn't even seem to be overtly trying to look sexy yet, his eyes were closed and he was settling into a rhythm, working himself down the length of Sephiroth's cock. But even the experimental, pre-fucking movements of his body had Sephiroth panting, practically crawling out of his skin to handle Cloud hard, to throw those legs over his shoulders and fuck him until he went blind.

But he knew whatever Cloud and those hips had in store would be worth the turmoil of watching and waiting.

Sure enough, when Cloud had finished easing down and his eyes fluttered open, he rested his palms on Sephiroth's chest, and began to work himself up and down in slow, circular movements.

Sephiroth might have sworn, or taken several names in vain, he didn't fucking know. He just gripped Cloud's thighs, unable to stop himself from bucking up into them, changing Cloud's slow, ambling roll into a faster bounce. He took a hand from Sephiroth's chest and brushed it against his open lips.

Sephiroth turned his head and parted his lips, catching a couple of Clouds fingers in his mouth.

He rolled his tongue around them, sucking softly, and nibbling gently with those fatally sharp teeth. Cloud moved his fingers in Sephiroth's mouth, pressing the tips to the razor sharpness curiously.

Cloud expected it when Sephiroth snipped at him, but cried out anyways. Partly from the minor pain, but mostly just caught up in the excitement of it all. 

Sephiroth's jaw fell loose into a soft gasp in response, and his heavy cock began pushing up into him with a steady, rhythmic force. Cloud closed his eyes, riding the bucking hips beneath him as he clutched Sephiroth's shoulders for balance, and for some sense of security. 

He then moved them to Sephiroth's wrists, silently asking him to sit up. He needed no coaxing, and wrapped his arms around Cloud's waist, rocking their hips together and pulling the back of Cloud's head into the greedy kiss.

They quickly found their beat in the new position, their lips unable to pull away from each other's in the wonderfully close proximity. Pounded into a fever of shivering, boiling movement, Cloud clung to Sephiroth until he was satisfied that they were connected as deeply as physically possible, every sense and inch of their bodies involved with each other.

When he could see the tidal wave of culmination approaching, Cloud ripped his mouth away with a feral snarl, and latched onto Sephiroth's neck, sucking the sensitive flesh into his mouth and marking out an area for branding.

He had never left a mark on Sephiroth before, but his teeth ground together with the desire to sink into his skin. He then had a vision of Sephiroth going into work the next day, everyone seeing his teeth marks and knowing that the General had fucked him, and that he had loved every moment of it. Cloud wanted them to picture in vain the sort of lover Sephiroth was, to wonder and to never, ever know.

It wasn't just public proof of their partnership, Cloud also remembered the way he felt looking in the mirror and finding Sephiroth's teeth marks on his skin. The thought that Sephiroth might feel cherished and loved the next morning, slightly sore and covered in tiny red nips..

Sephiroth responded to the sudden pain and possessiveness from his little one with a tirade of strained curse words, pulling and pushing Cloud's nearly exhausted body with clawed, digging fingers.

"Please.." Cloud moaned, collapsing a little against Sephiroth.

Cloud then found himself flipped onto his back, and eagerly accepted the pummeling force of a nearly uncontrolled man. It was wild and wonderful, and left Cloud gasping for air, but he rolled up at Sephiroth with a far greater desperation than to breathe. Sharp teeth bared at him from within Sephiroth's clenched jaw, filling Cloud with the morbid excitement of standing on the tracks of an oncoming train.

A jet of burning hot fluid filled Cloud and a sudden stillness from Sephiroth gave him the much needed chance to breathe. He inhaled only a necessary amount of oxygen before clutching himself with a quivering hand and yanking his shattering release out against Sephiroth, hosing down that gorgeously perfect body with only the purest of intentions.

And Sephiroth seemed to want nothing more as he pulled out of Cloud, taking his satisfied, but still leaking cock and thrusting softly against Cloud's, coaxing every drop out of them both.

"I.. mm." Sephiroth mumbled against Cloud's lips.

"Nmm." Cloud agreed, getting the jist of it.

And although it was only two in the afternoon, they immediately fell into an exhausted sleep tangled in each other, not caring that when they were going to wake up in about four hours, they were going to have to peel apart with the pain of a thousand band aids.

Chapter Image!

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch-15-95219452

A/N

1- Okay, so maybe it wasn't updated THAT quickly... this chapter gave me a lot of trouble. It had to simmer over a low heat, can't just boil that shit and call it done. THAT'S NOT HOW MAMA COOKS.

2- I didn't realize until I was done that a full on HALF of this chapter is the sex scene. Long winded per-fucking-haps?

3- Sorry for causing so much anguish, reviewers. It got desperate there at the end, but we have an update! Thanks for the reviews, they bring joy to my loins. And you have my solemn vow that Blonde Ambition isn't going anywhere just because it might take me a little bit between updates. I'm sorry if that dissapoints, that I can't update weekly or even more often, if I could I would. If you wanna band together and formally employ me to draw smut and write lemons all day, I would be your art slave for LYFE! You could even lock me up and feed me bread and water if you wanted to, it would be my ideal living situation. But until that day comes, I have to hook on the street corners to pay tha billz. You know how it is.


	16. Flexibility

Cloud opened his eyes slowly, but didn't move.

Couldn't, actually.

Sephiroth's full weight wrapped around him like a warm pretzel in the orange, late evening light. Cloud was completely trapped, but couldn't have thought of a single place he'd want to escape to. He slowly flexed his hands, finding one completely buried in the glossy silver hair at the nape of Sephiroth's neck, the other loosely cupped a hard, muscular shoulder. Cloud's eyes drifted closed to avoid the temptation to squeeze, cuddle, and ultimately awaken the sleeping angel.

There was a gentle, rhythmic pulse to the man that nearly dragged Cloud down into slumber along with him. His breath came slow and deep, and even though Cloud didn't want to move to look, he could tell Sephiroth's lips were slightly parted against his neck, sending hot, moist puffs of air tickling across his skin.

The sound was the best part, though. The soft, deep respirations were so innocent sounding, almost boyish, the carefree quality of it ensuring sweet dreams.

Whenever Cloud had dreamt of Sephiroth, it had been one of two themes; sex or adventure. In the more erotic variety, it was all smoke and sensual shadows, slow motion and echoed, wordless vocalizations. Basically, everything that sex with Sephiroth wasn't, but was far more picturesque than their clumsy, noisy couplings.

Although Cloud hadn't actually begun having sexual dreams about Sephiroth until they had actually had sex, it had been occurring with such a frequency that he had taken to sleeping with two comforters in order to mask any early morning evidence from Cam's eyes. His best friend hadn't actually said or pointed anything out, but once – and only once! – Cloud stood up from bed without checking his situation out first, and saw Cam's brown eyes widen, blink in shock, then turn quickly back to his early morning reading of Sense and Sensibility. Cloud looked down to find a furious hard on staring back up at him through his sweats, and had scuttled into the bathroom with a loud yawn, trying to sound casual.

But Cameron Wedge was far from a saint, as he tended to inhale sharply and dramatically when he beat off in the shower. Not that Cloud was exactly listening or anything… it was just easy to hear, what with the water pressure being only a generous trickle and all. But for the sake of peaceful cohabitation, neither spoke of any mishaps, and both treaded carefully and said little to each other between the hours of ten and five.

But when Cloud didn't awaken hot and bothered from his artistic and serious sexual fantasies, he was emblazoned to train for SOLDIER from visions of action packed heroism. Usually these dreams were linear and corny, but Cloud almost preferred them, and had begun to think of them as episodes of the "Seph and Cloud Show". They would usually begin like one of the more sexual dreams, kisses and sensations and Sephiroth's hands running over him, but then suddenly there would be a loud cell phone chime, or perhaps a knock at the door, or once, a bird through the window with a message tied to its foot.

Danger, General Sephiroth and First Class SOLDIER Cloud Strife! A community in distress from a monster! A brutal assault about to take place on an innocent woman! A bank robbery in progress! A child trapped in a burning building! A sinking freight ship full of puppies and kittens!

Sephiroth would give Cloud one last brief kiss before they would spring into action. From then on out it was all business between the two of them; uniforms were donned and weapons were strapped on, and together they would head out to defend the innocent in Sephiroth's tank – which in his dreams always had a large, functional machine gun on top.

There was always a struggle, always a challenge. Sometimes Sephiroth would limit break – which he had quite famously never done in real life. But Cloud's mind ridiculously created a limit for Sephiroth, in which he had nothing on but a pair of pants.

Cloud's own limit was that he became an older, much taller, and far more dashing version of himself that usually stuck around for the victory sex if he got to sleep long enough to enjoy it.

Cloud smirked at all of his musings, breathing in the sugary scent of his dear and relaxing back into the mattress, letting his body go boneless. His eyelids fluttered down to get what sleep they could underneath his beloved, when he noticed something.

Sephiroth's long fingered hand was curled in a lazy, relaxed pile next to Cloud on the pillow. Cloud waited with his breath held soft and slow, and it happened again; one by one, Sephiroth's fingers all cascaded into his palm, only to slowly stretch back out in a gracefully jointed wave.

Jazz fingers, Cloud thought to himself, wide awake with the humor of it.

Then he recalled seeing something like that being done in the materia casting lessons that went on near his hand to hand period. He always saw a lot of that motion going on for the beginners, but the more advanced could cast without moving their hands at all, unless it was a really, really big one. The day they were learning lightning strikes was the day Cloud gave up on dignity, as he couldn't help but squeak at every loud, startling pop of electricity. He surely thought he'd receive hazing for his transgressions, but his class all simply cooed and aww'd at every startled little cry.

He smiled as Sephiroth's hand waved again, and wondered if he was dreaming up his own version of the Seph and Cloud Show, maybe saving Midgar from some terrible monster before hauling them both back to bed?

Cloud couldn't stand it anymore, he moved. It was slow and careful, but he slid his hand out of Sephiroth's hair and wrapped the arm around his shoulders, hugging him gently.

One would have thought it was a crushing blow with the way Sephiroth jolted. His eyes ripped open and he shot up to his elbows, not looking down at Cloud, but behind himself.

Cloud froze. When Sephiroth turned back to look at him, it was annoyance that settled over his features, though his pupils were skinny slivers of black, flooded by electric green.

"Sorry…I needed to move," Cloud whispered the half lie with a dry, sleep husky voice and smiled a little, hoping to alleviate that look of startled annoyance.

Sephiroth laid back down on top of him, his forehead settling back against Cloud's jaw, and growled softly, "S'okay."

They were both quiet for a long while, Cloud lying still beneath Sephiroth's body. When the man finally spoke, it was slightly jarring, "Best pillow ever."

Cloud smiled, melting, free to hug and curl his legs around him, and in turn, Sephiroth's body vined tighter around his.

"Baby…" Sephiroth sighed.

"I love you…" Cloud whispered.

Sephiroth's stomach decided in that tender moment to answer for him, growling so loudly that Cloud actually felt the vibration against his own. He furrowed his eyebrows in disbelief and peered down at his taller lover over the bridge of his nose.

Sephiroth didn't move or open his eyes, but stated the obvious, "M'hungry."

"Wanna go somewhere?" Cloud asked, rubbing his palms across Sephiroth's soft shoulders.

"Mm-mm. Don't wanna get dressed," Sephiroth murmured against Cloud's neck, still unmoving, "Pizza?"

"I'll never get ripped that way," Cloud sighed, plucking at the layer of baby fat still clinging to his abdomen that only he could see.

Sephiroth knew from experience that complimenting Cloud would only beget high pitched squeals of denial, so he instead said, "I am, and I eat pizza all the time."

Cloud mewed. "You must be a freak of nature, then."

Sephiroth smiled as Cloud giggled softly at his own jest, trying not to take the offhand comment to heart. Instead, his stomach gargled impatiently, dipping down into eerie, demanding tones. Slowly, as if he weighed five thousand pounds, Sephiroth raised up onto one elbow, peering down at Cloud from beneath heavy lids, "I'm the freak?…You talk in your sleep."

Cloud tilted his head against the pillow. "…I do?"

"A lot," Sephiroth smirked, and made a move to push his hips against Cloud's when his lazy look of haughtiness melted down into one of mild concern.

They both looked down to where their bodies lay flat, skin to skin. Some of it was smooth, some of it was covered in trim pubic hair, and all of it was completely glued together by gummily dried, crusted semen.

"Shit," they both whispered simultaneously.

Sephiroth frowned. "…We should do this quick."

Cloud shook his head side to side. "No!"

"Slower is worse," Sephiroth argued.

Cloud pointed to the bathroom. "We roll off the bed, then you pick me up, and we get into the shower. The water'll loosen it up, yeah?"

Sephiroth smiled, and mimicked the way Cloud spoke. "Warteh?"

Cloud rolled his eyes, as this was not the time for discrimination. "It's an idea though, right?"

"We'll fall apart before we get there. Might as well just get it over with," Sephiroth then slowly, like a cat about to attack, got up to his elbows and knees.

Cloud moaned miserably. "Oh, Seph! Dooon't!"

Sephiroth tested things out by pulling his hips up gently, and Cloud could actually see his skin lift up away from his body. Delicate skin. Very, very delicate skin. "…Seeeph…"

"One..." Sephiroth counted dangerously.

"Nooo!"

"Two..."

Cloud covered his eyes with his hands.

Instead of saying three, Sephiroth disengaged himself. There was a fleshy rip of skin, a sharp yank of hair, and a lightning strike of pure pain before the room was filled with sounds of male agony.

"Mother fuck!" Sephiroth swore and laughed involuntarily as he rolled onto his back, clutching himself with both hands as if he had been brutally kicked in the groin. It was every man's weakness, even the General's.

"Mary and Joseph!" Cloud cackled in response, his face scrunched into a sour scowl as he curled into the fetal position.

After the moment of ripped pain passed, they turned back towards each other to laugh at the other's reddened and abused genitals, then quickly made good on Cloud's suggestion to shower, scrubbing off the evidence of their lovemaking and subsequent pain. There was some minor groping involved, as both were frisky males who knew no shame, but Sephiroth's hunger had transferred to Cloud, and both needed sustenance.

Sephiroth said he was in the mood for seafood, and decided to make the sacrifice of putting on clothes in order to obtain it.

Cloud supervised, choosing a pair of fabulously tight jeans and a faded Touch Society shirt for him to wear underneath a fetching light gray blazer. Sephiroth briefly modeled, allowing him to administer a proper tushy squeeze. Cloud then pulled on his recently made infamous tight girls' acid wash jeans. The first time he had worn them on campus, it had all but caused mass hysteria, as he was gawked and laughed at wherever he went. When they were zipped and hugging his hips, Sephiroth even gave him a long once over with his eyes and snorted a laugh.

Whatever! He loved them, therefore nobody else on Earth knew anything about fashion, and that was that.

With a plain black jacket over his bare chest and his favorite retro yellow Nikes with no socks, Cloud was ready for their quick roll through the drive-thru of Johnny B. Crabcakes'.

However, to Cloud's astonishment, Sephiroth passed up the fast food chain and took him to the sort of upscale, fancy restaurant that people on real, live dates go to!

Valet, white table cloths, soft candle light, delicate china and utensils and wine glasses, tiny black menus, and a snooty staff all practically begging to kiss Sephiroth's VIP ass. It was all very unexpected, especially considering the fact that Sephiroth had allowed him to walk out the door looking like a crackhead!

Cloud's chest was filled with humiliation, and even though it would have taken a crowbar to get the acid wash jeans off of his body if Sephiroth had made the effort to tell him to dress more conservatively, his brain screamed that he'd never forgive his lover.

Since they were General Sephiroth and some kid, they were seated immediately and without question to their attire. Everyone else in the place however, had donned their finest 'I'm-rich-and-probably-getting-some-ass-tonight' suits and skirts.

"You could have told me we were coming here!" Cloud hissed after Sephiroth ordered coffee and he himself demanded a cocktail to calm his nerves.

"Did you wanna go somewhere else?" He replied innocently.

Cloud threw up his hands, and the gesture was so completely harsh in such a dainty atmosphere, he caught his own hands mid wave and drew them in to his chest, looking around in panic that someone may have noticed, "It's not that... I feel like fucking Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman!"

"Who?"

"I am severely under dressed!"

Sephiroth's expression gave way to absolutely no indulgence, he merely stated serious fact. "You're beautiful."

Cloud shut up, and after a moment, he came to the realization that the entire restaurant wasn't gawking at him and his attire in horror. He was with Sephiroth of all people… and it really did feel like he couldn't have cared less what Cloud wore. Just like he didn't care that Cloud was a hot mess when he took him to work earlier that day. Or that he embarrassed himself often. Or that he was absolutely imperfect.

And knowing all that, the most wonderful man on Earth had just told him that he was beautiful, and really meant it. Added to that the fact that he had also told everyone else who would listen… Cloud was humbled beyond comprehension. And at the very same time, lifted up to a whole new stratosphere of self assurance.

Cloud leaned forward a little, all of his inner turbulence kept as a guarded secret, and he instead dripping with thick, sarcastic disbelief said, "If you say so."

Sephiroth just smiled at the little games Cloud liked to play.

As for food, Cloud decided to let Sephiroth order for him, as he couldn't bring himself to choose anything off of the ridiculously expensive menu. Sephiroth ordered them both a fondue spread to share, so Cloud could eat whatever he wanted, and he could down the rest. They brought out a huge tray full of different types of raw, naked little shellfish, and four tall ceramic bowls of sauces, each complete with a little burning coal beneath it. Cloud then watched in complete wonder as the waitress lit a fire in an oven on the wall next to their table.

"So what should I do first?" Cloud asked when she left.

Sephiroth picked up a stick, stabbed one of the defenseless little nude shellfish corpses, and held it over the fire. "You cook it. Or if you like it raw, you don't have to."

After a few moments he was satisfied, and then submerged the little clam into one of the sauces. "Then you dip it."

How that was more or less disturbing than haggis, Cloud would never know. But he found that he greatly enjoyed clams and marinara sauce together. Sephiroth liked the scallops and the thick garlic butter.

"Would you like another drink, sir?" the waitress asked Cloud, just as he found the bottom of his second fruity little cocktail.

"Oooh!" Cloud cooed at Sephiroth.

"No," he answered firmly. "Two is enough."

"But this one sounds so good, it has pineapple in it!" Cloud tilted his head behind the drink menu. "It's called a Leg Spreader..."

"...Bring him one," Sephiroth told the waitress.

The one, tiny blot of negativity to the evening was when the waitress flirted with Sephiroth by saying this to Cloud: "It must be really amazing to work with someone like General Sephiroth, huh?"

"Yes, ma'am," Cloud had slowly agreed, not sure what else to say.

"No," Sephiroth had immediately risen up from a cup of espresso to correct. "He doesn't work with me. Not yet, anyways. He's my partner."

She did not compute, "Well… how can he not work with you if he's your partner?"

Cloud had straightened up a little bit in his chair, emboldened by Sephiroth's declaration of partnerdom. "We're together."

Something seemed to be broken in her head, and she mused, "Oh... so... you're family!"

"No! He's my boyfriend!" Cloud corrected with a fluster, and as fate would have it, someone dropped a tray at the operative word, and after a little murmur from the restaurant in response, she turned back to them with a smile.

"So General Sephiroth's your brother? That's wonderful!"

"We're not related!" Cloud sighed, his smile still polite but ripe with exasperation. "We're... lovers."

"...Lovers of what?"

"Um... each other?" Cloud shrugged, and the woman stood there practically scratching her head.

"What's your first language?" Sephiroth asked suddenly and incredulously, his annoyance evident. "We are in a relationship. The kind where you fuck."

Cloud had to bite his tongue almost to bleeding to keep quiet, restraining his bawl of embarrassment, and his squeal of jubilation. She proved herself to be smarter than they thought, and decided not to try and rebound from her taboo, but instead quickly bowed out, then returned with an overly gracious, 'please-remember-to-tip-me' visit from the desert cart. Sephiroth didn't even hesitate to snatch a bowl of cheesecake chunks and chocolate for dipping.

"You're allowed to be rude to people, ya know," Sephiroth told him as he greedily consumed the cheesecake. "There's not a goddamn thing anyone can do to you. Even if they wanted to."

Cloud had sighed softly, hearing the echo of Rufus' words as he poked at the cheesecake that Sephiroth shrewdly allotted him. "I guess I just don't want to like... I dunno. Disgrace you or something."

"Cloud, people don't know who I am because I'm a gentleman. They know me because... I'm... I..."

Sephiroth trailed off, an air of what might have been described as an extremely profound melancholy surrounding him. Cloud regarded him in completely unveiled concern; the man looked like he had a million thoughts racing through his memories. Sephiroth opened his mouth, and Cloud was wild to know what he was about to say.

Sephiroth didn't say anything. He fucking sneezed.

"...Bless you!" Cloud sighed with relief.

After sniffing, he chuckled without the merest hint of angst, continuing, "I'm well known because I kicked ass in the war, and then they accidentally made me the General."

Cloud smiled. "Accidentally, huh?"

"Total accident."

Cloud gave him a disbelieving grin. "Seph… you probably act differently when you're not with me. Don't you?"

Sephiroth hummed, "I don't think that's too uncommon. You probably act a little different at school, right?"

Cloud thought about it, then nodded in agreement. "Somewhat. But probably not as different as you. I mean, people really, truly respect you."

"You sayin' you don't?"

Cloud laughed a little. "Of course I do! But being who you are… you probably have to be pretty guarded most of the time, right?"

Sephiroth nodded in agreement. "You've just gotten to know my personal side… probably too soon, but what can ya do? I can't help it, you've always made me comfortable. It's what attracted me to you."

Cloud's mind was reeling with such a sudden, romantic notion. "...Really?"

"Well, besides the fact that you're sexy as hell," Sephiroth smiled, staring at nothing in particular in the air between them. "...Did I ever tell you that I hate bein' touched?"

Cloud's eyes went wide. "...You do?"

"I can't stand it. Friends are okay, but even then sometimes it, I dunno… stings," Sephiroth smiled widely. "'Member at the Halloween party, when Max was dressed up as me? You noticed first, and said somethin' like, 'Holy shit, he's you!'"

Cloud laughed at Sephiroth's ultra fey Nibelheim-accented impression of him, unknowingly sounding exactly like it, "Yeah!"

"When you said that, you grabbed me. Nothin' special, just somethin' like this." He leaned across the table and gently gripped Cloud's forearm, a casual gesture made romantic by the atmosphere. Sephiroth smiled and continued, "…I didn't think much of it... until you went like this…" And then Sephiroth loosened his grip until the touch was only fingertips, then slid them off of Cloud's arm, leaving behind a tingle of ticklish sensation. "…You gave me goosebumps."

Cloud blushed right down to his toes. "I did?"

Sephiroth smirked his affirmation. "After that, you musta thought it was okay to touch me, because you kept doin' it. You'd bump me and nudge me..." Sephiroth lowered his volume just enough to introduce a tiny rumble in his voice. "You don't know how bad I wanted you that night, do you?"

Cloud giggled bashfully. "Why didn't you tell me!?"

"I'm tellin' you now."

Cloud grinned like a maniac, his eyes dropping down as he fidgeted with the napkin in his lap. When he glanced back up, he found Sephiroth watching him with a lazy sort of adoration.

Cloud returned the gaze. "I wanna be the only one."

"Keep it up, and you will be," Sephiroth told him. Although the statement might have been terribly condescending, it hit Cloud's ears with nothing but warmth and sincerity, the candlelight only amplifying Sephiroth's rapidly developing powers of heart stopping seduction. And maybe the haughty, conceited nature of the words only amplified that. Either way, Cloud's boyfriend had him drooling.

He licked his lips. "...Can nobody else touch your hair?"

"You got it. I'd ask the same, but I don't think it's possible for people to not touch that," he smiled, his eyes roaming over Cloud's yellow rat's nest of tresses.

Cloud giggled, patting at it. "They'd just touch it more if I asked them not to."

As the evening came to a drifting close, Sephiroth hadn't left a scrap of food anywhere in sight, and he almost sadly swirled around the avocado sauce, having nothing left with which to dip.

Cloud couldn't resist, "…Fatass.

"Hey!" Sephiroth jolted in a near perfect rendition of true offense. "Just because Zack calls me that, don't think you can."

Cloud couldn't hide his delight at finding an actual button to push. "But I want to! It's fun!"

"Then I'ma call you my little Chihuahua..." Sephiroth threatened darkly, then actually jumped in his seat a little bit when he felt a small foot slide up against the inside of his calf.

"Then I'll hump your leg like one..." Cloud murmured, leaning backwards in his seat a bit to stretch his leg further up into Sephiroth's lap.

Cloud sucked in air as Sephiroth caught his sneaker and yanked it, jerking Cloud forward into the table with a loud, but brief scrape of his chair across the stone floor.

"...I might be into that." Sephiroth smiled, sliding his fingers up inside Cloud's jeans, his fingers tickling along up to the backside of his knee.

"Check please!" Cloud squeaked.

By the time the check came, they had cooled their respective jets a little bit. Sephiroth paid, tipped generously, and they waited outside for the valet.

It was rather frigid out, and the crisp air fully extinguished any leftover heat from their under the table flirtation. Sephiroth faced Cloud and pulled him close, taking his smaller hands and tucking them into his coat pockets.

And by some miracle, in the huge city of Midgar, on the curb in front of that fondue restaurant, Sephiroth and Cloud had found a pocket of perfect silence. There was no sound at all, and no movement anywhere, only the smell of ice and cold, amplified by their altitude and pushing it into their lungs with the sea side humidity.

They both paused. Cloud could feel those glowing green eyes fixed on him, although he didn't look back. He kept his own eyes focused on the galaxy that surrounded them, reminding himself visually that he was still just a gay little speck in the grand, silent scheme of things.

Then, it began to snow.

Cloud's focus plummeted back to Earth. Midgar, Upper Plate, the fondue restaurant, the valet lot, next to Sephiroth, his hands in Sephiroth's pockets, their fingers twisted together.

Maybe it was the alcohol, or the never ending soundtrack in his head, but to Cloud, it all felt so... heavy and beautiful.

"I love you," Cloud said quietly.

Sephiroth chewed mentally for a few seconds before softly asking, "…What's that mean?"

Cloud smirked, "It means I value you."

"No..." Sephiroth said with a gentle roll of his eyes, caressing scabby, yet soft knuckles under the veil of his pocket.

"We're good for each other. And… 'I love you' means that I know it."

Sephiroth seemed incredibly pleased with that explanation. "I don't think you know how good you are for me, baby."

Cloud nodded his head, his hands leaving Sephiroth's pockets to pull at his forearms. The action was oddly dominant as he urged him close and engulfed his waist with long, wiry arms. Cloud hugged Sephiroth with one hand high between his shoulder blades, the other curved around his hips.

Sephiroth had to admit to himself that he was absolutely smitten.

So... why not say it? Why not? It was the truth, afterall.

"Cloud, I..." Then Sephiroth's guts froze in a sharp terror that had nothing to do with the outside temperature. Cloud's small, delicately handsome face turned up to him in casual curiosity, his eyes blinking and his head tilting. Then Sephiroth exhaled a little as his eyes caught his overly conspicuous tank roll around the corner, maybe even a little in relief. Standing out in the cold suddenly didn't feel at all like the place or time to tell this beautiful creature in proper verbs that he was ultimately cherished.

As much as he adored Cloud, Sephiroth was far too selfish with his emotions to simply blurt it.

When they arrived back at Sephiroth's loft, there was little to say in way of words. Sephiroth's body was thrumming with energy, and Cloud's blood was spiked with alcohol, an erection starkly obvious on his thigh before they had even made it through the front door. It was an invitation Sephiroth would not refuse.

Cloud was still interested in being on top, and took Sephiroth's lap again after a slap dash application of lubricant, only this time he crawled around to face away from him.

He cast his blue eyes over his shoulder to see if it was acceptable, and Sephiroth answered by pulling him close, encasing him in his arms and aligning their bodies before nudging gently inside, letting Cloud sink down the rest of the way.

Sephiroth's favorite parts of Cloud were replaced with a completely different set of favorite parts. The lines of his narrow back, his rounded ass rolling fluidly up and down, the bottoms of his feet and his cute toes wiggled and curled of their own accord.

They were by no means masters at the art of lovemaking, but they could both tell that things were definitely improving. Cloud was more at ease with the feeling of taking in Sephiroth; he was relaxed, open, and experiencing only the faintest of stretching pains, which was buffered almost completely out by those maddening spikes of pleasure.

And Sephiroth was now well used to have his cock strangled by Cloud's body, and having already been thoroughly satisfied that afternoon, he wasn't feeling that burning urge for release and was far more interested in his lover's body.

Sephiroth buried his face in Cloud's yellow hair and hugged him close, running his hands over every inch of him, from his lips to his toes and back again. Finally, after lingering down the trail of his flexing, taut abdomen, Sephiroth's fingers made their way to that shockingly long erection between his legs.

Cloud seemed to go out of his skin at the contact, throwing his head back to lean heavily against Sephiroth's shoulder. Sephiroth realized that he had been so preoccupied with getting acquainted with the "ins and outs" of how to make love to Cloud, that he rarely if ever had given release to him, always simply expecting him to handle himself when the time was appropriate.

That wasn't congruent with the sort of lover Sephiroth wanted to be.

Especially since in all truthfulness, Sephiroth absolutely adored Cloud's cock, craved the husky noises he made, delighted in the little twitches of his hips and the pretty blushes of his cheeks. He felt much more lust for Cloud's male body than he ever expected to when he first flirted with the notions of homosexuality in his mind, but it was too perfect a fit in every single way. Cloud was so utterly sexy, so cat-like and naturally rhythmic... Sephiroth wondered if he had anything to offer the lovely creature besides a thick cock, and the ability to pilot it.

Then Sephiroth thought to his own natural abilities, his unlearned but somehow mastered talents. There were a lot of things hecould do and was good at, and he wondered how he might apply them in bed.

He trapped Cloud in his muscled, vine-like arms, stilling his bouncing a little bit, "Slow down for a sec, I wanna try somethin'..."

"What?" Cloud breathed, looking back over his shoulder as those arms loosened around him and instead held onto his hips.

"I think I might be flexible," was the only warning Sephiroth gave before he took one of Cloud's arms and bent his head underneath it. Cloud wrapped it around Sephiroth's neck in mild confusion which gave way to panic when Sephiroth's hair spilled across his lap, and he ducked his head down lower than should have been anatomically possible.

The man bent himself in fucking half, and before Cloud could begin to register why, his cock was swirled by the softness of Sephiroth's tongue before becoming engulfed in the heat of his mouth.

"Seph!" Cloud gasped as he went still in Sephiroth's lap for fear of choking or otherwise hurting his beloved.

Sephiroth somehow managed to buck his hips restlessly, his fingers kneading into Cloud's thighs, telling him without words to continue. Cloud hesitantly did, but quickly shed that hesitance as he lost himself in the very rare sensations of being fucked and sucked – sensations only porn stars or swingers know. With every lift of his hips, he was driving his cock deeper down his beloved's throat, and every time he moved them back down, his intensely sensitive spot within was caressed by the leaking, wet head of Sephiroth's erection. Cloud gave up all pretenses; he was squeaking, mewling and growling as if they were fucking in outer space and nobody was there to hear him scream.

Sephiroth wasn't finding great difficulty in his position at all, any discomfort well worth the absolutely fucking priceless sound effects he was being treated to. He even had the moxie to tease, speeding up only to slow down and just barely rake his deadly teeth across the sensitive bridge of the swollen head in his mouth.

Cloud just about lost control of himself with that tickling sharpness, kneading his hands into Sephiroth's hair and his working shoulders, watching the muscles in his back shift beneath his skin. And even through his escalating haze of noisy passion, Cloud put his hand flat on one of Sephiroth's shoulder blades in concern.

It looked different than the other one, bigger somehow. He could have sworn he felt something moving beneath his hand that wasn't in sync with the other, rolling muscles of his back. Cloud rubbed it with a slight tsk, chalking it up to the extremely odd angle of his lover's body, and hoping it wasn't a kink that was developing at his expense.

When Cloud's cock became rigid and slightly salty in his mouth, Sephiroth came up from his self imposed position with a small, involuntary gasp. Cloud's head turned to catch his wet, reddened lips in a kiss, but Sephiroth only gave into the tenderness for a restless moment. He wrapped one arm like a corded seatbelt around Cloud and gripped his cock with the other, driving his hips up off the bed to meet Cloud's as he pumped his fist in time.

It all felt so profoundly good that it was jarring when Sephiroth adjusted them both with the slightest of thoughtful hesitations, probably just to get a more secure grip on him. But still, Cloud suddenly became horrified of the concept of him stopping, or slowing, or doing anything to veer him off of the straight and narrow path to gratification. "Seph! Don't stop! Don't stop! Please!"

Sephiroth was all too happy to supply the demand, never faltering on their perfect balance of thrusting and grinding, but murmured against the nape of his neck, "If I fuck you hard… ya gonna come for me?"

Cloud all but screamed his affirmative.

And to his horror, Sephiroth slowed to a softly punctuated thrusting against Cloud's desperately squirming ass, and gripped his cock in a hot, tight hand, but provided no friction. "I dunno if I should, then… I kinda like fuckin' your ass… I dunno if I wanna stop so soon."

If Cloud was teetering on the very edge before this teasing began, he was now hanging onto sanity by a single thread. He hadn't the will to even scream, every single one of his nerves was zeroed in on every slight kiss of Sephiroth's cock against his sweet spot, and his begging came out on a slight whisper, "…Please, Seph? M'so close… please?"

Sephiroth gathered Cloud up as he lifted to his knees on the mattress, and having greater range of motion, and began to give him exactly what he wanted. Cloud turned his head to cry out in approval, and it put his ear against Sephiroth's mouth.

The sorts of things that were growling out weren't things that made sense outside of the hectic moment. Some flew right under the radar, until Sephiroth pressed his lips tightly to Cloud's ear to ask, "…Whose pretty little ass is this?"

Cloud had to smile, and growled shyly, "Yours…"

"Mine?" Sephiroth asked coyly, a deep moan sliding out against his greater will.

"Yeah..!" Cloud gasped, hands and heat yanking him hard towards his end. "All yours…"

"Fuckin' yes it is," Sephiroth agreed whole heartedly, hissing as his cock thrummed in response to acknowledged ownership of the hot, gripping wetness it craved.

Cloud quickly became an arching, mewling rag doll in his arms, helplessly climaxing in response to the hot breath and gruff, dirty little words of encouragement. Sephiroth followed suit before Cloud was even done spilling himself, gripping Cloud's thighs and hauling his boneless form up and down manually through his own finish. When ecstasy was done roaring through his system, Sephiroth clutched at the panting boy in his lap, nuzzling against the small ear he had moments ago been nipping and growling obscenities into.

Cloud's hand lazily lifted and gripped the back of Sephiroth's head. He turned his head to the side, revealing the heated blush of his cheeks and a wide lazy smile, and pulled him in for a tender kiss that cleared Sephiroth's conscience of any potential sexual wrongdoing.

After immediately cleaning up to avoid becoming glued together again, they had lazily fallen into a fit of cuddling, too relaxed to even think about remaining upright. Cloud hugged Sephiroth securely from behind, taking care to check his shoulder. It looked normal, but he placed a kiss over the area anyways, pressing his cheek to the older man's shockingly baby soft skin, nuzzling happily.

Sephiroth gave an audible sigh and threw a leg back over Cloud's, tugging him ever closer.

"You think you might be flexible...?" Cloud whispered into the back of his hair.

"Just you wait…" Sephiroth mumbled back, his voice thick and heavy with sleepy contentment.

Cloud was hovering over sleep, idly smoothing down Sephiroth's hair which had dried to his face with cooling sweat, when he was stricken with a terrible thought, "Ugh, Seph… do you work tomorrow morning?"

"No, but later on tomorrow," Sephiroth had said into the pillow. "Stay?"

Cloud had burrowed in, happily spooning Sephiroth as if he was a large stuffed animal. And much to the chronically sleepy General's very slight annoyance, Cloud began to cheerfully chatter away behind him about school and his friends, the topic of conversation hovering briefly around Christmas.

Cloud had two days off of school plus the weekend, not nearly enough time to justify a full day of land travel to Nibelheim. And the thought of riding in an airplane made him want to vomit forever. So, he was going to spend the holiday on campus. Alone.

Cam and Psycho were going home for the time off, as were many of the other students who were from neighboring lands. Cloud noticed that not a lot of boys were enrolled who were from the other continent, as it was a little more behind the mainland in economy and population. Most of those small town boys stayed near their homes, not drawn by the promise of opportunity that the glamorous Shin-Ra army commercials on T.V. advertised. Cloud had of course, but then again, his mother was rather worldly herself, surely only still residing in Nibelheim due to her pregnancy with Cloud so early in life. Cloud wondered if that was why she let him go so easily, even encouraging his dream to be a SOLDIER in her own foul mouthed way.

Either way, he'd be spending the holiday in the dorms by himself like fucking Harry Potter. When he revealed this bit of information, he had looked intently into Sephiroth's face… and found nothing.

Sephiroth was resting peacefully with his eyes closed, and didn't seem fazed by the information. Furthermore, he did not take the opportunity to invite Cloud to stay at his apartment.

Too soon, Cloud had decided, trying not to let negative emotions gather, It's just too soon to spend holidays together…

"…So, what do you want?" Cloud had then asked with a gentle, excitable kicking of his feet.

"Don't get me anything, Cloud," Sephiroth sighed, seeming bored with the question, but the overpowering vibe of disappointment that immediately emitted from Cloud had him backpedaling, glancing sleepily over his shoulder. "...You can if you wanna. You just don't hafta."

Cloud shrugged a little, "I do want to…"

"But I don't need anything. I'd rather you spend money on yourself."

Cloud clucked at him, true annoyance lifting his voice, "It's not about money! I just wanna get you a present, damnit!"

"Why?" Sephiroth asked, truly puzzled.

"Because etiquette would then dictate that you would have to get me one."

Sephiroth's green eyes shot open, and he chuckled with refreshment at true, blatant honesty. "Surprise me, then. Whadda you want?"

Cloud smiled brilliantly for a moment at Sephiroth's surrender, before it turned into a pout of regret. "It kills me, but... anything at all but clothes. Closet's full."

"I'll hafta think up somethin' creative, then…" Sephiroth thought out loud, reaching back to snake his fingers into Cloud's soft spikes of blonde.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

On the first morning of the new semester, the boys were all jubilant to miss out on a day of early morning physical classes to stand in line for their new schedules. They were encouraged to use free morning hours to walk to each class, introduce themselves to their new instructors, and become associated with their new routines. It was mostly because of the schools' disdain for tardiness, and the desire to curb any excuse a boy might have to show up late.

Instead, the courtyard and cafeteria were abuzz with reasonless excitement, the same sort of barely controlled teenage boy rioting that Cloud had been confronted with on his very first day in Midgar. A few third class SOLDIERs had been conned or court-martialed into Big Brother duty, most of not all of them ignoring their guidance tasks in favor of hackeysack.

"Whaddaya got?" Cam asked, swiping Cloud's yellow schedule card as soon as he departed the table for those with last names beginning with P-T.

Cloud made a grab to retrieve his property, but Cam easily held it aloft, scrutinizing it.

"Tell me, tell me!" Cloud demanded, standing up on the toes of his red chucks.

"Runnin' 2, Boot Camp 2..." Cam read, and Cloud took a moment to express his misery at this information through the art of throwing back his head and whining. "…and den... Weapons 1, Mako Science, Geometry..."

Cloud sighed. "Aw! Why do I have to take another fucking math class?"

Cam waved the card around, "...I heard we got math every single goddamn semester..." and then he sent a knowing grin down at Cloud. "It's the General that's so big on academics..."

Cloud elbowed him lightly with a small, coy smile. "Okay… then what?"

"You got... Rhythm Theory…?"

Cloud froze. "…Really?"

"Rhythm Theory," Cam repeated, as if the words tasted strange in his mouth. "What's dat? I thought you was takin' Weight Trainin' wit me."

"You're absolutely right!" Cloud bellowed. "That's my elective period! I did choose Weight Training with you! You got in, didn't you?"

Cam compared his own schedule to Cloud's side by side. "Yeh! I gots Weight Trainin' here... maybe it got full, like?"

"But I need it! Look at me! What the fuck is Rhythm Theory gonna do for my guns?! What is it anyways?!"

Cam swallowed approximately one million wisecracks about Cloud's so-called "guns", and instead sifted through his linguistic knowledge before arriving at a conclusion. "I'm thinkin' dat's like... marchin'? I thought we didn't have it til next year, though..."

Cloud was livid. "This is some bullshit! Why the fuck do I have marching lessons on my elective period!? Fuck this! Fuck this bullshit!"

Cam immediately surrendered Cloud's schedule card with a grimace, not wanting to be bitten by his little friend and infected with rabies. After a moment of stewing and rereading the schedule for himself, Cloud decided to march his little ass right on down to Building G, Room 101, and give them all a piece of his mind. Off he went in a tizzy.

He slowed down a little when he was out of sight, and gazed at his schedule breathlessly.

Not just anyone was accepted into Rhythm Theory, afterall.

Cloud had chosen it on a secret whim, his pen marking his first elective choice almost on its' own. He and Cam had previously discussed taking the weight class together in order to free up more time in the evening to begin a sparring regime with the other gym rats they had become loosely associated with. More time for other activities, a grade for the training they were doing anyways, everyone wins… that was their plan.

But something had been repeating in Cloud's mind for the past several weeks.

"Do you drum?"

Little did the General know that the tiny seed of commentary had grown into wild rat's nest of imagination in Cloud's mind. Sephiroth had asked it so casually, as if it could have been an actual possibility. It made Cloud wonder why he didn't drum. Not because of any fool reason like, 'it was in his blood', as it made the art sound like a disease.

But ever since he was a baby, he never could tell when he was or wasn't banging or hitting something, because he always was, always had been. And being neck deep in shit that he didn't naturally excel at – physical sports, fighting, and god forbid magic in a few months… Cloud felt the urge to give it all up at least ten times a day.

He felt out of his element at times, and at other's, he felt that being a SOLDIER was all he could ever have wanted. But he indulged himself sometimes in thoughts of what he would do if he were to quit.

He could get a job and do the college thing. He could get a job and not do the college thing. He was certain that whatever he had with Sephiroth would survive if Cloud was outside of the military realm, so it wasn't the General he was staying for, and it wasn't the General that made him sign up in the first place.

As odd as it was, Cloud wanted to be a SOLDIER because it was the Earthly pinnacle of manhood. He would feel nothing but pride and capability twenty four hours a day.

It just seemed like such a far star to reach, though. How could he ever be as fast as Zack? Or as strong as Sephiroth? Or as disciplined and athletic as Nurse Rhonda? All while being as fabulous as Rufus?

Cloud just needed something to get him through it. Something that was all his own.

And of course it was a secret, as he hadn't even told Sephiroth about choosing the class. It wasn't about fear, something inside him just... wanted to see first.

He had never been to Building G before, or even the wing of the campus grounds it was located. In fact, Cloud hadn't really taken the time to truly explore the sprawling academy campus, as he had spent most of his recent free time sprawled beneath Sephiroth. Cloud grinned openly at a flood of warm memories and slowed to a lazy stroll.

When he arrived at the G building, he quickly located the room to greet his marching coach. It was the only door in a cavernous hallway, and a massive thumping and shouting burst periodically from within.

PLEASE DO NOT ENTER, a hand written sign begged, WE ARE CREATING RIGHT NOW!!

And so, with a desperate curiosity, he went through the motions of his school day until it was time to return. The sign had been removed, so Cloud felt no guilt at pushing the heavy door open and entering.

There was a tiny corridor with soft murmuring coming from the end of it. Cloud pulled his uniform straight and adjusted his messenger bag, always a little apprehensive about entering a new classroom full of new people. He was brushing his hair out of his eyes when he came to the end of the small hallway, and looked out onto a room that was filled with percussion instruments.

Cloud froze as everything fell into place in his mind. It was just enough of a pause to seem awkward, and the boys that were sitting around in a loose circle of chairs all turned to look at him. There were only four others; a chunky brown haired boy that looked to be turning into a wall of lean mass, a thin bespectacled fellow that was in danger of being shorter than Cloud himself, a bright haired ginger, and a tall, self important looking douchebag.

Band geeks, Cloud lamented.

He took a seat on the outskirts, not exactly interested in melding into their conversation, chewing on his lip and tapping his foot in anxiety until the bell chimed and class began.

The instructor who Cloud knew was Coach Hendrix came out of a windowed room to the left, sipping a mug of coffee. He was younger, physically fit as all the instructors at the academy had to be, with plainish dark hair. Cloud watched him as he took a stool before the group, seeming right at home. Something about the casualness made Cloud a little apprehensive, "Alright guys, as you can see, we've got someone to replace Jerry."

The four others looked to Cloud, who wasn't at all expecting to be pointed out so soon, or so suddenly.

"How long have you been playing?" The self important douchebag inquired seriously.

"Oh," Cloud blinked. "Oh. I don't. I thought this was a class to learn how...?"

There was a brief smattering of displeased sighing, before Coach Hendrix waved them quiet, "It is a class, but usually to be accepted, a minimal knowledge of drumming is required… we can make allowances, though."

"Why should we?" Douchebag asked, bored and unimpressed with life.

"Because nobody else signed up," the instructor supplied.

Cloud felt about two feet tall. "Look, I can just get a schedule change. I didn't really know there was a prerequisite."

"You didn't read about the class in the student handbook before you chose it?" Douchebag demanded.

"No," Cloud said dryly.

"Well, if you have an interest in percussion, we can at least see what we're working with," Coach Hendrix shrugged.

Cloud's eyebrows turned up. "Well... what is this class? I mean... if we aren't learning how to drum, what are we doing here?"

Coach Hendrix sipped his coffee. "We do practice different drumming techniques, but essentially you're here to learn the battle tempos."

Cloud had no idea what he was talking about, and it showed on his face.

"We're the military time keepers," the short boy supplied. "For marching and drills here at the academy."

"And sometimes, for battle!" Douchebag amended.

"Battle?" Cloud gawked, "But we'll be SOLDIERs or army, won't we be too busy fighting?"

The group suddenly all blinked and looked around the room uneasily. Cloud looked at the instructor, who grimaced softly. "You won't be doing time keeping as a SOLDIER, we send you into battle as needed."

Cloud went wide eyed, "You mean…"

"We've all seen battle already," the ginger spoke up. "The SOLDIERs do their best to protect us, but sometimes they just can't. That's what happened to Jerry..."

"What happened to Jerry was tragic, but it was the exception to the rule," Coach Hendrix said gently. "He's the first drummer boy we've lost in many years."

"Drummer boy!?" Cloud bellowed. "You mean… what is this? 1812? Don't they have like... radios and shit? Why do they need drummer boys?"

"For the same reason SOLDIERs still use swords," the hulky boy said. "My brother is a SOLDIER, and he says mechanical weapons fail so much that they're completely unreliable. Radios, even trucks out there die all the time. It's the planet," he stated conspiratorially. "The planet doesn't like war."

"Yeah, whatever," the ginger interrupted. "The point is, they need us. If ya don't think you can drum, it's kinda dangerous, yo. For you and for them."

Cloud was slightly horrified at this information, but also completely exhilarated at the though of being able to help out the SOLDIERs. "Well… if you give me a chance, I'll do my best to catch up with you guys!"

"Show us what you can do," Coach Hendrix invited. "No harm in it. Renold, let him borrow your sticks."

The ginger handed Cloud the sticks that had been twirling through his fingers. Cloud hadn't ever held a pair of them before, and searched inside of himself for some sort of second nature shenanigans, but alas, it only felt like holding two skinny pieces of wood. No sparks, no boners, no inspirational Rocky music.

He slowly stood up and went to one of the five snare drums that we set up side by side. He moved behind it, lifted the sticks, and prepared to strike.

"W-what should I do?" Cloud asked, looking at the instructor for guidance.

Coach Hendrix sipped his coffee. "You know what a drum roll is?"

Cloud nodded. "Yeah… I've never done one, though. Should I try it now?"

"Give it a whirl."

Cloud frowned, thinking about the millions of drum rolls he had heard and stomped around to in his lifetime. It was just a quick wrist movement, probably. Maybe a wiggle of the fingers, maybe a …

The room was filled with a steady, strong pounding as Cloud performed his very first, actual drum roll.

Cloud could do a drum roll. No sparks, no boners, no Rocky soundtrack, but he could definitely do a drum roll.

He couldn't help himself, he abruptly ended the tinkering beat to hop into the air. "I did it!"

And somehow, the charm and magic of Cloud Strife won over a room of diehard band geeks as they accepted him, albeit hesitantly, as one of their own.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sephiroth was smitten by horror movie monsters.

It all began with Vincent Valentine, as all things in his young life quite literally had.

One rare afternoon at Vincent's condo had found Sephiroth happily consuming pizza on his leather sofa, perched on the edge to ensure that his feet solidly hit the floor. The light-up sneakers, jean overalls and red zip-up jacket he wore were the only things that made him look relatively his age. His hair had settled from a white blonde into a metallic, polluted silver that would see him into and through adulthood. The fine strands were beginning to brush his ears, but he had begged the staff and Vincent alike not to cut it. Coupled with the snowy white of his skin, and he looked like a little albino cat.

On good days, anyways. On that particular occasion, Vincent's little buddy was also the proud owner of two painfully brutal black eyes, a face full of bruises, and stitches across the middle of his bottom lip, all evidence of a rigorous new training schedule.

"You get scared and I'll turn it off, understand?"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes back into his head, "Viiiin, I'm ten now. That's double digits."

"Oh, my mistake," Vincent indulged him, and proceeded with the movie marathon.

They sat and watched zombies devour the innocent, high school teens battle vampires, blobs eat entire towns, and serial killers silently and efficiently stalk loose women.

Almost every one of the features contained graphic sex scenes, and knowing just where each one was located, Vincent promptly skipped them. Only once did little Sephiroth get a brief eyeful of female anatomy when Vincent wasn't quick enough, and he glanced over at him to find his small face completely deadpan and unimpressed.

But it was this occasion that marked a grand turning point in Sephiroth's life. There had been many attempts by Hojo and the more diehard of his underlings to convince the boy that he was a thing, an animal, a monster, a creature of higher purpose than being merely human.

These suggestions never stuck to him, because he was intelligent enough as a child to realize that the other monsters in the lab did not wear shoes. He wore shoes. The large fish people in the tanks swam up quickly to eat scraps of chum that were thrown in – they had no preference to what they ate, while he very much preferred pizza over just about anything. And the pieces of alien Jenova that floated in the tanks didn't move, didn't breathe, and seemingly didn't do much but chill out. He loved to move, to play, to run around and around and faster and faster until he fell to the floor, his chest heaving and color dancing to the beat behind his eyelids.

He didn't behave like the monsters in the lab, but it had been reiterated so much to him through his short life that he thought of himself as a special monster, maybe a super rare one that only looked like a little boy.

And after watching movies full of so-called monsters with Vincent, and taking a bit of advice that had been given to him long ago, Sephiroth began to feel a keen sense of pride in himself.

That pride manifested itself in odd ways.

"You're base, Sephiroth. So base," Hojo had said once, looking into Sephiroth's throat with slimy appreciation, not speaking to him specifically, but the tape recorder held up to his lips, "The acid he swallowed didn't even leave a burn mark. Such a terribly lovely creature... base in every sense of the word…"

"Fug yeh!" Sephiroth had cried merrily around the popsicle stick. Immunity to acid? Check!

Hojo had sighed, "…And you ruin it all by speaking."

"Sowwy."

Then he got the wild hair up his ass to emerge from dark corners of the lab with a scalpel raised menacingly, stalking around slowly as he imitated the masked serial killer Michael Myers. The first time this had happened, the nurse he had gone after screamed bloody murder, and inside an hour he was in a straight jacket. He was confined alone for roughly three weeks until he had convinced the staff he was sane. The second time it occurred, they locked him up for two weeks. The third time it occurred, they hired on a child psychologist full time. After that, the sight of a pre-teen Sephiroth with a sharp weapon and vacant glare only begot ruffled silver hair and chuckles from the staff.

Then there was the classic game of jumping out and shouting 'rawr!'. Or he would convince the newer nurses that his room was inhabited by a poltergeist by throwing furniture around and setting small fires with his mind. Or writing 'redrum' on every available foggy surface. Or zipping himself up into bodybags only to terrify passersby by rolling himself onto the floor and squirming after them.

Sephiroth was quite literally haunting the Shin-Ra Medical Science Facility.

Beatings for this behavior came frequently, but pain as a punishment wasn't the way to discipline a creature such as Sephiroth. Like a feline, it only amused him and made him act out in larger ways. It was only when the staff began to block visitation from Vincent that Sephiroth began to behave himself.

But as fate would have it, he grew out of this phase as he began to enter his teenage years. Instead of acting out monstrously out of boredom and the need for a sense of identity, he was raging due to teenage hormones and mako. The staff found that they greatly preferred their spooky little playful psycho over a stomping, angry, fussy, loud-mouthed teenager.

But even as his monster routine faded, Vincent's visits remained ever infrequent. And as he entered his school years, they diminished down to none at all. When six whole months had gone by with no sight of a lanky, dark haired man in a blue suit, Sephiroth decided that instead of feeling out of sorts about it, he would simply fix the problem himself.

He begged his maternal grandmother, not knowing her relation to him of course, for Vincent's phone number. After several days of pestering, while the methods ranged from sugar sweetness to threatening glares, she relented and gave him what he asked for.

When Vincent answered his cellphone, he was shouting over pounding club music.

"Vin?" Sephiroth had yelled into the phone, confused with the background noise, not finding a dance club congruent with what he knew about Vincent Valentine.

"Huh?!"

"VIN!"

"Yeah!"

"It's Seph!"

"Who?"

Sephiroth's heart threatened to break, "It's Sephiroth, for fuck's sake! Remember me?!"

"Seph?!"

"No fuckin' shit! Yes, it's Seph!"

"Don't swear!"

Figures Vincent would make that out of all things, and Sephiroth chuckled softly, "Why the fuck not, Vin?!"

"Because I said so! You okay!?"

"I'm alright! I miss you..."

"What?!"

There was no way he was repeating that, so Sephiroth went with, "HOW ARE YOU?"

"I'm alright, squirt! I'm at work right now!"

"Doesn't sound like it!" Sephiroth pointed out.

"I'm watchin' the president's kid get wasted! It's his thirteenth birthday!"

Sephiroth scrunched his nose in confusion, "Thirtieth!?"

"No, thirteenth! I gotta make sure the little bastard doesn't take his fuckin' pants off!"

Sephiroth flushed with humor at the joyous occasion of Vincent succumbing to swearing. "Well, I won't keep you! But I wanted to let ya know that I'm graduatin' soon!"

"Holy sh – crap!" Vincent cried, editing himself.

"Yeah!" Sephiroth agreed, "You wanna come?!"

"…I gotta see if I'm workin', but I'll try! Call me again if ya need anything, okay?!"

That was the last time they spoke until Sephiroth's graduation day.

And that was the last time they spoke, period.

The Shin-Ra company, for all its size, was a relatively small place.

Vincent and Sephiroth were in the same room on numerous occasions, often only a few feet or seats apart. Vincent was there when Sephiroth was sent off to Wutai for the first time. He was there when Sephiroth accepted the position as General, and he was there at the board meeting in which Sephiroth demanded a better living facility for the future Turks and SOLDIERs at the academy.

In turn, Sephiroth was there when Vincent was promoted to the Captain of the Turks. He was there when Vincent proposed that Shin-Ra manufacture its own bullets, a multi-million gil endeavor that in turn, saved Shin-Ra billions. He had witnessed Vincent canoodling, Vincent brooding, and Vincent leaning over to tie his shoe.

They never spoke.

So much had happened since the last time they had, that Sephiroth didn't think they ever would again.

He wondered in his mind what he was to Vincent, and what Vincent was to him. He desperately wished that they could have been family, much like a child would wish to have a millionaire as a father. He swallowed the truth that Vincent must have simply felt guilty for the "special" lab rat, just there to comfort him, but remained ultimately uninvolved.

And now that Sephiroth was grown and had a life of his own, Vincent must not have felt the need to speak to him in that tone, that lovely tone of father to child… that made Sephiroth feel like a monster more than anything Hojo ever did to him.

Sephiroth was fresh out of a meeting in which he had occupied a room with Vincent, sitting almost directly across the table from the man. Their eyes caught a few times, and there had not been the slightest hint of recognition. Everything in Sephiroth's nature demanded that he give a small smile and a nerdy wave, but he kept himself rigid and cool, giving the speaker his attention rather than a reluctant father figure.

The meeting was beginning to wind down when Sephiroth took the liberty of excusing himself. It was a few minutes after four in the afternoon, and this was designated as Cloud time. Like clockwork his phone sounded in his pocket. He pulled it out and the saved school number with a little cell phone stock, cartoon image of an angel popped up, and it chimed loudly with an Anal Orgasm melody.

Sephiroth smiled for the first time that day and answered, "Baby."

"Hey!" Cloud gushed, causing Sephiroth's smile to broaden.

"What's up?"

Cloud rattled off the goings on of the day, with a brief rundown of each class he was taking. Weapons 1: Boooring. Mako Science: Too hard for the first day! Geometry: Easy, but sitting behind a smelly kid.

"And then, for fourth period I have..." Cloud began to untie his boot only to tie it again, "Rhythm Theory. It's a drumming class."

"Cloud –"

"Well, it's not really a drumming, drumming class. It's a class where they're teaching us how to drum, but I'm not really going to be playing, it's just so we can learn to be the timekeepers for the marches and drills, like, land battles for SOLDIER. The uniforms aren't even cute, it's just my school uniform with a bullet proof vest, so it's really not a big deal or anything."

A sneaky smile curled into Sephiroth's voice. "…You're a drummer boy now?"

Cloud let out a breath. "Yeah. I'm a drummer boy now."

"I cannot wait to see drumsticks stickin' outta your back pocket!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud giggled.

They lay in bed together, naked and very recently satisfied. Cloud playfully mounted and straddled Sephiroth's ass, bouncing him up and down into the mattress until he lazily groaned in complaint.

"What am I drawing?" Cloud then asked, ghosting fingertips across Sephiroth's back.

Sephiroth smiled into the pillow, trying to mentally create a picture of what Cloud was tickling into his flesh.

"A star."

"Yep. Now what?" Cloud traced a large shape on Sephiroth's ass cheek.

"A cock."

"You're good at this!" Cloud crowed. "...Now what am I spelling...?"

"That was long. Do it again."

Cloud slowly, seriously traced the letters over Sephiroth's shoulders and back.

Sephiroth smiled, "...Nice ass, then an exclamation point?"

Cloud collapsed onto him, hugging his neck warmly. "Yes! Now do me!"

"I already did you."

Cloud slapped at his arm then rolled onto his stomach expectantly.

Sephiroth groaned and shifted to his knees, then straddled the backside of his smaller lover. His flaccid genitals fit ever so nicely in the crevice between Cloud's legs, and Sephiroth thought it felt just as nice not fucking as it did fucking. He smiled in utter contentment and rubbed his hands over Cloud's back, warming him up… and thinking of what to write.

He exhaled softly, making a single pass over Cloud's back.

"I." Cloud guessed.

Sephiroth made two mirror image swooshes.

"That was a heart. Love," Cloud then guessed, correctly. "I can hardly imagine what it'll be. Boobs?"

Sephiroth only made one slow, turning swoop.

Cloud didn't say anything for a few moments while Sephiroth's heart beat away at his ribs. Finally, a blue eye glanced up at him from over a softly tanned shoulder, "…Me?"

Sephiroth smiled, and nodded.

Cloud shifted beneath him, rolling over to show his soft, emotional face, "Seph... please, please. Say it to me."

Sephiroth opened his mouth, then close it and smiled, "I think... I need to warm up first."

Cloud frowned a little, "...Warm up?"

Sephiroth nodded, "I'll say first that… I love... your blue eyes," He leaned down close, inches from Cloud's face, "Didja know that I love your eyes, Cloud?"

Cloud blinked them, then looked away with a faint blush.

"And I definitely love your smile."

One touched Cloud's lips instantly.

"I love your heart."

Cloud looked up at him desperately.

"I love your laugh."

Cloud smiled wider, barely suppressing one.

"I love when you curse."

Cloud did laugh at that.

"I love how you kiss me. I love how you make me feel... I love that you make me feel."

"Seph..." Cloud gripped his shoulders, seeming almost ready to fall apart.

"...I love you." Sephiroth finally told him.

The warmth, the love, the intense brightness of Cloud's ocean colored eyes... dimmed. It dimmed until it disappeared, and Cloud was left looking like a shell, a casing.

Fake. Plastic. Lifeless. Like a puppet.

"I love you," Sephiroth told it. "...I love you so much."

The eyes stared up, unseeing. Long legs were heavy around Sephiroth's waist. There was no life in the slender body beneath him.

Sephiroth slammed his eyes shut.

When he opened them, he was alone. He sat up in bed, immediately feeling for Cloud, and then realizing he was okay. He looked at the clock and found that it was only a little past eight at night. Cloud was in his dorm, alive and safe.

Cloud was okay.

Sephiroth put his hands to his eyes and rubbed them hard enough to hurt. Then he put his thumbs to his ears, pressing them closed with a pained sigh, muttering nonsensical curses to himself.

His ears always rang that way before he heard her.

On cue, there was a high frequency sound occupying his skull, accompanied by a foreign language that he had no business knowing how to speak, but could understand the loose meaning of.

Sephiroth got up from bed and made a lazy beeline for the bathroom, feigning indifference the way one hides fear from a wild animal.

He wasn't quick enough, though. His right hand came up, and he slapped himself across the face hard enough to rock back on his heels.

He was stunned for a moment at the only strength on Earth that could make him see stars – his own. Blood hammered in his ears and he worked his jaw slowly. He grabbed the hand that did it with his free one, and continued towards the bathroom.

The voice's shrieking indignation translated roughly into demands to be let go of, to be allowed free reign of his body.

Sephiroth's right hand fought against his left while he calmly flipped the lightswitch with his elbow. He also noted the presence of a spectral hand pulling at him. Two hands against one, now. He shook his head bitterly. "Bitch, bitch, bitch..."

The unseen hand grabbed Sephiroth's ear, and he let a winced groan out before he could stop himself.

The alien voice dripped with disdain at Sephiroth's frequent use of vulgarity.

Sephiroth swallowed shallowly as he marched himself to the bathtub, his right leg working against his left, shoved by halfway by himself, halfway by an unseen force.

His blood thrummed in absolute horror.

But it was delicious horror. It was this, these battles against his greater nature that Sephiroth lived for. It wasn't about popping out of dark corridors or startling people, anymore. Sephiroth's inner monster demanded that he pillage and burn, rape and murder.

He wouldn't have that.

Sephiroth dropped to one knee, and was half-dragged kicking to the bathtub. His right hand threw open the curtain, and made a grab for bar soap.

In finding none, the voice crowed about cleanliness being next to godliness. It was too fucking stupid to realize that he was a bodywash-using faggot.

But instead of letting the issue rest, it smashed Sephiroth's forehead into the tub's stone floor. There was pain to be felt, but it only made Sephiroth laugh a little. The sound of his dry humor enraged the invisible force, and it propelled him backwards, sliding him across the bathroom floor.

He didn't waste even a split second before taking a syringe from the middle drawer and throwing open the mirror. He very calmly took the bottle he was looking for, not bothering to clear the air out before filling the syringe.

He worked hard to fill the needle and keep the bottle steady with one hand, while holding the other, flailing one in his armpit.

"You're not goin' anywhere with this," Sephiroth said softly to his reflection, right before he was thrown headfirst into the mirror. The shattered glass and cuts on his face were noted in his mind, but not important enough to fret over. He clutched the needle, pushing out the air before plunging it into his neck, praying for a vein.

His right hand fought his left, the needle ripping roughly through his skin while it emptied out into his bloodstream. He knew he didn't have much time after taking it, and was already managing a calm strut into the bedroom.

He snatched up his cell phone from his nightstand only to have it snatched right back by the unseen hand. It floated in the air and Sephiroth watched placidly, almost with detached interest.

Sephiroth knew that it didn't pay to let Jenova know she scared the hell out of him. It was an episode. Just another episode. Nothing more.

"You didn't raise me…" He argued softly aloud with the indignant voice in his head, and carefully... gently… gently took his cell phone from the air.

He felt her hand. He felt her there.

Nothing's there... Sephiroth firmly decided, having no other choice but to believe himself.

I am here, though.

Sephiroth fell to the floor in crippling pain, but he couldn't assess the exact damage. He didn't feel there was a part of his that wasn't damaged. But then, he found that he didn't exactly… care.

About anything, really.

B7-F was an elephant tranquilizer.

He heard the voice fade, fade, fade. His hands went limp and his cell phone spun across the floor.

What's the number for 911... Sephiroth smiled loopily to himself, then began the everfucking crawl to his cell phone.

When he reached it, it spun away farther. And having lost no strength, Jenova grabbed his hair and pulled him across the floor by it.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He was the receptor. If the receptor was down, the signal had nowhere to go. Sephiroth couldn't ponder it, and was already was too high to feel fear, but his survival instincts screamed at him from through a thick glass window of sleepy indifference to escape.

He kept his eyes focused on his cell phone, and moved towards it, trying to keep them open.

A phantom foot planted itself in his side, knocking him over onto his back, and forcing all the air from his lungs.

Pain never meant much to Sephiroth.

He only flopped back over and continued his crawl.

He reached the phone through a tirade of invisible abuse, opened it with one hand, and began to hit buttons, any buttons.

The door to his closet flew open on its own, and he was shoved roughly inside the small, pitch black room.

The door slammed shut, and it was Sephiroth and Jenova in the dark.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

"Cloooooooud?"

"Whaaaaaaaaat?"

"Phooooooone!"

"Is it my mooooom? Tell her I'll call her laaaaaater!"

"Nooooo, it's some guuuuuuuuuy!"

Cloud appeared instantly, seeming to have teleported through walls and doors, and plucked the phone out of Carter the Klepto's hand, and answered it softly, "…Dear?"

"Baby… wouldja do somethin' fer me?" Sephiroth slurred, panting.

Cloud rolled his eyes, figuring his beloved was on another one of his runs and his poor cock would have to suffer through a grunted and breathy conversation, "Is it decent? Because if it is, I won't do it."

"Baby, get Nurse Rhonda. I c – … I can't getter on her cell. I needja ta find her fer me?"

Cloud's eyes were completely round, "… Are you alright?"

"I'm awright," Sephiroth laughed a little bit, and sniffed, "Baby… I needja to find Rhonda, an' teller ta come to my place."

"What's wrong?"

"'M sick."

"Seph! Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'll come take care –"

"Cloud. Baby. Find Nurse Rhonda. That's what I needja to do."

Cloud's skin prickled, and he was mentally transported by the official-sounding, yet slurred request, and the dire need behind it.

This was the Seph and Cloud Show.

It was time.

Sephiroth was in danger, and instead of asking anything more, Cloud said, "I'm on it."

Although the only thing keeping Sephiroth from an apparent suicide were his defiant fingers curled underneath the belt around his neck, he felt suddenly certain that everything was going to be okay.

Chapter Images can be found here!

SephxCloud – owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch16-Snow-100049963

I drew Vinny and Baby Sephy, but it was written in the story as Sephy being all beat up and sad looking. Soooo… in case you wanna see cutesy pie Sephy NOT beat up, go here: owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Chap16-Happy-Verson-100049827

If you're a drama whore and you WANT to see baby Sephy all battered looking, go here : owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Chap-16-VS-Lab-Abuse-version-100049902

A/N

1- I experienced the desire to go back to the very beginning and like, re-edit this entire story. I'm sure some of you might have noticed a difference in the writing between later chapters and the very first couple of chapters. Buuuuuttttt.. no. I'm way too lazy and waaay too busy (bad, bad combo), and if you people still managed to fall love with it despite my shitty writing, then I really don't care. This entire issue stemmed from some harsh criticism I received, but I say TA HELL WIT' IT.

2- But one thing I DID do for you Fanfiction dot net-ers : I went back and fixed the links to all the chapter images!! YAAY! So, if you've never been able to make it to the pictures, you should have an easier time of it, now. XD enjoy!

3- And thanks many times over for your reviews – you know you get a tax break for leaving lots of them, right? XD


	17. Tough as Nails

Cloud only returned to his bedroom to snatch some boots and a jacket, and tugged them all on after he was already outside in the snow, tying his laces as he hopped down the sidewalk on one foot. He made it to the administrative offices in under forty seconds, drawn to the single light still on in the front office like a moth to a flame.

He burst into the place, immediately calling out, "Hello?"

Nobody answered, and in those wasted few seconds, Cloud had a terrible inkling that they would somehow be operative, that they somehow could be the difference between Sephiroth well and Sephiroth.. not well.

He hadn't sounded himself on the phone, in fact he'd sounded downright vulnerable.

Whatever ailment he was suffering from was surely serious, and Cloud wouldn't be found wasted another fucking second if he could help it. "Helloooo?!"

Mrs. Yates, the lovely and flowery office manager emerged from her office with a finger held up to her lips and a phone to her ear.

Cloud ignored the pantomimed request for silence. "I need to find Nurse Rhonda!"

"Just a moment…" She murmured politely to her conversationalist on the other line before pressing the receiver into her shoulder. "You're being very loud and rude, in case you were raised by wolves and didn't already know."

"It could be life or death!" Cloud dramatized, trying to make her see the urgency of the situation in as little words as possible. "Someone is very sick, and I need Nurse Rhonda!"

Mrs. Yates looked alarmed and opened her mouth to speak, but Cloud didn't have time for whatever she was about to ask. "It's not a student here, I need her for a personal friend who contacted me."

"Why would a friend of Rhonda's contact you?"

Cloud clenched his fists. "Because he's my boyfriend! And he might be hurting! Please, Rhonda's address, any phone numbers she has listed? He's tried her cell and can't reach her!"

"The first thing we should do is call 911," Mr. Yates announced, and began to abruptly end her phone conversation.

Cloud couldn't argue that they should call 911, it was the first thing he thought when he awkwardly hung up with his beloved. But Sephiroth had asked for Rhonda specifically. He obviously had access to a phone – he could have called 911 himself if he felt it was appropriate.

Already out of patience, Cloud finally burst, "On the authority of General Sephiroth, if you don't give me Rhonda's information immediately, I'm gonna throw a FUCKING fit."

Little did Cloud know, Mrs. Yates was formerly Lt. Yates, only retiring her lustrous military career in favor of making babies. While she wouldn't have traded her children for anything, she greatly missed the military gossip, and therefore had several friends in the Shin-Ra building who filled her in on all the juice. Any fool knew that Sephiroth was dating a young man at the academy, and blonde, short, and cute were repeated adjectives concerning his lover.

But this uppity little baby-faced prick? She decided to test him. "What gives you the right to call upon the authority of the General?"

Cloud stomped in frustration. "He's the one who needs Rhonda! It was an order!"

Ms. Yates would have taken her interrogations further, but Cloud had begun to hiccup from stress. She decided to assist.

She went to the employee directory and pulled out Rhonda's contact sheet, making her way to the copier when she suddenly realized she was no longer holding the paper and Cloud was sprinting towards the door.

"Hey!" was all she could say.

"On the authority of my boyfriiiieeend!" Cloud yelled behind him as he hit the snow once again.

Cloud squinted at the paper and turned it right side up, never faltering his running speed although he didn't know where he was running to, yet. In Communications class, it was taught that is was essential for a SOLDIER to be familiar with the layout of whatever area he's in, and they were given assignments to navigate their classmates via radio around Midgar twice a week. He rolled his eyes dismally, as Rhonda apparently lived quite a ways away, it seemed. But, she was relatively close to Sephiroth's loft, so as soon as he got to her, Sephiroth was as good as taken care of.

But then he frowned... what if she wasn't home? Then what?

He was pounding his boots past the Shin-Ra building when he had a thought : Julie! Julie would know exactly where Rhonda was! But damn, she was knocked up and wouldn't be there for work… Elena! Elena might know where they were! Or maybe he could find Zack, and he could help! Or maybe Rufus could give him a ride! A SOLDIER should always use every single connection available to him!

So Cloud swerved himself into the white, massive reception room of the Shin-Ra building, dashed to an available receptionist and banged on the desk while he caught a quick breath to speak. "Ma'am! I'm looking for a Turk named Elena."

Several people stopped and stared. The lady receptionist went wide eyed, then leaned forward to say in a hushed tone, "You can't just come up asking to see a Turk!"

Cloud swallowed, not even nearly understanding his transgression, and not exactly caring, either. "…I'm looking for a lovely woman named Elena."

She leaned back a little bit, eyeing the people that had stopped to stare until they went about their respective businesses. "What's her last name?"

Cloud almost choked on his frustration. "Ma'am, it's an emergency. I'm just trying to find Elena so she can tell me where Julie is, so she can tell me where Rhonda is."

"Without a last name I'm afraid I – "

"Fuck it!" Cloud cried and rushed to the elevator, jumping on as it closed full of suited businessmen. The receptionist only shrugged.

Cloud felt sheepish in the silence, not having any idea what he was doing. He remembered what floor Sephiroth's office was on, and what floor the SOLDIERs were training on, but wasn't sure how that information could be useful.

"Um…" Cloud murmured softly to a portly fellow beside him. "If I want to go to a floor, all I have to do is press the button, right?"

After the awkward affirmative, Cloud found the button for Sephiroth's floor, smacking it although it was already lit. He closed his eyes as they ascended, trying not to think about the movement.

You're still, Sephiroth told him in his mind, that unearthly gorgeous smile glowing on his pretty, angelic face.

His vision was interrupted. "Excuse me, son. You've chosen the executive floor. Do you have clearance?"

Cloud looked at the portly fellow, noticing that he had a very tiny, unfashionable moustache. He was about to go off on a mental tangent wondering what went through the man's mind when he looked at himself in the mirror, when he remembered to address the very non-important issue at hand.

He couldn't help but sound like a little punkass. "No, I don't have clearance. Do you?"

"Of course."

"Then you'll be my clearance."

Displeased and beaten, the mustachioed fellow looked straight ahead and ignored Cloud for the rest of the ride.

Cloud refocused on his task as he arrived at the floor, slipping off with Tiny Moustache, as well as a few of the other men. He tried to remember where to turn and when, only seeing in his mind's eye the strutted jerk of Sephiroth's hips as he walked, his long hair swaying in front of his ass like an erotic pendulum. But he followed the image in his mind, and was relieved to find familiar surroundings. Very familiar, in fact. He expected people to be gone and the floor to be half dark, but most of the same people were there, and it was bustling as if it were noon and not almost nine o'clock at night.

The young secretary closest to Sephiroth's office was busy doing what looked like college homework. Cloud approached her, feeling a spurt of shyness. "…Excuse me, miss. Do you remember me?"

She looked up, quite surprised to see him of all people. "Sure! Is Genny working tonight...?" She cleared her workspace of schoolbooks and was already flipping through files while her eyes darted around, trying to look busy.

"No, he's not. He asked me to find Nurse Rhonda for him, and I just didn't know where else to start looking."

She blinked. "Why?"

"Because," Cloud growled.

She made a face, realizing she was dealing with a mini-sized Grumpyroth. So she put a finger to her cheek in thought. "Umm... I know Julie is out for her babies... but Rhonda... did you try calling her?"

Cloud rattled off the information yet again. "Sephiroth is sick, he couldn't get her on her call, so he asked me to find her. There aren't any other phone numbers listed for her... and I didn't want to go all the way to her house if there's a chance she isn't there."

She seemed only slightly alarmed with all of this information. "Oh. Oh, okay... weeell... umm... Why don't you try calling her again?"

Cloud gave an exhausted sigh. "Is Zack around?"

"Who just said my name?!"

Cloud spun around and almost jumped into the air to click his heels together in joy. "Zack! Thank God!"

Zack smiled ear to ear, almost distracting Cloud with his underwear model good looks. "Now that's how I like to be addressed when I enter a room – …what? What is it?"

Cloud approached Zack and said softly, "Seph's sick. He needs Rhonda."

"Sick...?" The big, dumb, blindingly handsome man frowned. "I just saw him a couple hours ago."

"He sounded really bad, Zack," Cloud fretted, wringing his hands in impatience. "And he can't get a hold of her. He asked me to try and find her."

"…You think maybe it's an elaborate ruse because he's planned a surprise party for you?"

Cloud blinked, trying to wrap his mind around what had just been suggested. "Wh – .. No! C'mon, Zack! Do you have any idea where any of the dykes are? Any dyke'll do!"

Zack raised his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed, winking softly at Cloud. After a few moments, he smiled brightly. "Elena!" There was a pause. "Yeah well, pause it, I just need a minute. Where's Ronny?" Another pause. "Ohh. What?" Another pause, and Zack laughed. "Now why the fuck would she do that, is the bitch crazy? No, no, don't tell me any more! I haven't gone home to watch it yet, I Tivo'd it – "

Cloud gripped Zack's suspenders and shook as hard as he possibly could, which certainly got Zack's attention. The unprepared, 1st class SOLDIER was shaken like a rag doll by the hands of the smallest 1st year cadet at the academy.

"Where is Rhonda!?" Cloud bellowed as he gave Zack whiplash.

Zack grimaced, "Julie's on bedrest, so they're at home. Want a ride?"

"Yes!" Cloud stopped giving Zack shaken baby syndrome long enough to wrap his arms around his waist in relief.

"Okay, lemme just finish up some papers and shred something and then we'll be off," Zack turned back into his cell phone, where Cloud could hear Elena's deep voice still chattering.

Cloud yanked on his suspenders again, "No, Zack, now!"

"Seph's tough as shit, smalls. I know you're worried, but he's probably fine, okay? Besides, he's the one that's sooo intense on me finishing this tonight... sis?" Zack frowned as Cloud was already running back to the elevators, pounding on the ground floor button.

He had a general idea of where Rhonda's place was from the easy address system of the plates. Knowing what he knew, if he could slide onto a departing train, it would only be a few stops away. Fifteen minutes, max. Then it would be a quick drive to Sephiroth's loft from there.

Twenty minutes. Surely Sephiroth could wait a mere twenty more minutes…?

He would have to.

Cloud dashed outside, folding Rhonda's contact paper and tucking it into the back of his pants as descended the staircase to the underground station three steps at a time. He hopped over the turnstile like a hurtle jumper and raced up to the ticket window. "78th Street," he barked impatiently. "When does it leave?"

"This one's departin' now," the sexy, tattoo'd ticket boy drawled. "Gotta wait for the next, arrives in fifteen."

Cloud stomped his boot into the ground. Another fifteen minutes would mean Sephiroth would have to wait over half an hour longer. Half an hour?

No!

He threw fare gil at the sexy ticket boy as if he were a stripper and reached into the tiny window to snatch a ticket, and ran towards the loading dock.

The automatic doors to the train were already closing. There was no way in hell to make it, but Cloud tried anyways. He stopped in front of them in momentary defeat, before he remembered that the little passenger windows were able to pop and crank open to accommodate smokers, of which there were plenty in Midgar.

He slapped at the nearest one furiously, and only a few passengers glanced his way with classic Midgarian indifference. He walked down until he found one with an old man seated close by, and knocked firmly.

When he was ignored, he punched the damn thing until the elderly gentleman looked up at him, and croaked, "What's ya fuckin' problem?"

"Open the window! Please! I have got to get on this train!"

Cloud could tell the gentleman was seriously considering ignoring him, and pleaded, fogging the window up with his nose, "Someone I love needs me! He means everything to me! Please?!"

The old man's tiny, wrinkled eyes rolled upwards in a look more suited to a bored teenager and eased himself up off of his seat with the heavy aid of his walking cane. He took a moment to adjust his cockney hat before turning around and inspecting the window, seeing how it operated.

The train whistle blew, and Cloud slapped at the thick glass again. "I apologize for being rude sir, but can you please hurry the fuck up!?"

"I outta just leave ya skinny fuckin' foreign ass out dere…" the old man grumbled, slowly and shakily turning the crank as though it weighed a million pounds.

The window popped open, and slowly, way too slowly tilted inwards. Cloud pushed restlessly at it, trying to help hurry the process along.

Somehow this offended the old man, who stopped cranking. "Leggo, shit for brains! You's is makin' it harder!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Cloud whined, resting his palms on either side of the window and gripping the metal. "Do your thing! Get it open!"

The old man reached slowly for the crank, and taking his sweet ass time, continued to gingerly crank it.

The train shuddered before it began to move.

"C'mon!" Cloud roared, gripping the bottom of the half open window and walking along with the train.

"You gonna yell at me? I ain't doin' nothin' for ya!" The old man grumbled and cursed, turning away. "Go back to Bone City ya little bastard!"

Cloud balked at the tiny opening, and for the first time in his life, prayed to God he was small enough.

He was beginning to be dragged by the train as it picked up momentum, and he hoisted himself up, digging his toes into a skinny ledge that lined the train. He told himself that it was just like climbing up the vertical rope wall in Boot Camp class, only instead of a plush padding to break his fall, it was a fast moving, blurred concrete plane littered with buzzing, electrical train tracks. His fingers dug into the ledge harder as his palms began to sweat, while nobody on the train nor at the station saw anything odd about this, or offered the slightest bit of help. He considered just hanging off of the train as he was, as it would surely save time in the exiting process, but Cloud could see that there would be certain obstacles.

Namely, the fact that this particular route was about to take the train into a tight underground tunnel.

Cloud stilled the involuntary squeaks that had been escaping his throat and took a deep breath, as it was way too late to reconsider this, a point driven home as the world blurred around him. The speed caused the train to tremble a bit, shaking his booted toes loose of their ledge. Cloud put all of his weight on his palms and ducked his head under the window, pushing with all he had.

There was blinding white hot pain as Cloud roughly scraped his scalp on the metal underside of the tiny window, but he was in the train… up to his armpits, anyways.

He kicked his legs in the cold, fast moving air and tried to slide the rest of the way through the opening. The unforgiving metal scratched and squeezed the broadest part of his shoulders, but as his body naturally narrowed towards his hips, he felt himself slide relatively smoothly under. That is, until the bottom of the window hit the tiny, but abrupt curve of his ass and wouldn't budge any farther.

He couldn't believe it. He had too much junk in the trunk!

Too terrified to feel properly smug about it, Cloud looked for something to pull himself with. He was in far enough to almost grab one of the safety poles, but only almost, his fingertips touched it but he couldn't get a grip. So instead, he leaned every ounce of his weight forward, pushing himself against the metal wall with his hands. No good.

Then as if the Virgin Mary herself whispered the suggestion in his ear, Cloud realized he was in; he could crank the window open himself! He reached up behind him and clutched the crank, and turned it mere millimeters before the window gave enough to allow his ass to slide under, his long legs tumbling in after him.

He landed upside down and on his neck in a graceless pile with his legs in the air, and just stayed that way.

He was trembling something violent, gasping in air desperately. He swiped the sweat that poured down his forehead after he caught a decent bit of breath, and groaned in pain as flopped over onto his side.

Cloud slowly stood up on his quaking legs, turned around, and saw a train car full of Midgarians chewing gum at him in transfixed, but lazy interest.

He looked back to the open window to see how narrow of an escape he had made, and saw that he still had a few moments before they entered the tunnel. As the train rushed past the threshold, Cloud gave a brief shudder, as he would certainly have been knocked off of the train, or squished like a bug.

Breathing a big sigh of relief, he dropped down, taking a seat near the crotchety old man.

"That how they get on trains in fuckin' Bone City?" the old man scoffed at him ignorantly.

"I'm from Nibelheim," Cloud frowned, the pride for his hometown a little too large of a pill to swallow not to correct the mistaken assumption.

The old man shrugged. "Same difference."

Cloud only laid his head on the seat and closed his eyes.

The train ride only seemed to take a moment, and soon Cloud was pushing his way off through the crowd. Taking another look at the contact paper, he dashed off in what he hoped was the right direction.

Within a few minutes, he was knocking on a door. When it didn't open immediately, he pounded his fist into it until it did.

"Jesus!" Julie cried, then seeing it was Cloud Strife of all people, felt comfortable being pregnant and bitchy, "What the fuck is your problem?"

Cloud swallowed air, then reiterated the story yet again. "Seph needs Nurse Rhonda. Couldn't get a hold of her. Needs her."

Julie's eyebrows lowered slightly. "She left a while ago to see him. She had her phone on silent, I guess. What's going on?"

Cloud leaned desperately on the doorframe. "…How long ago did she leave?"

"About fifteen minutes ago."

Cloud barked on ironic laughter. "Fuck! No, but that's good. I'm gonna go, sorry to bother you."

Julie made a movement as though she were thinking of coming along. "Should I be fucking worried, here?"

"No, it's freezing out, go inside or your babies'll catch cold!" And with that Cloud took off towards Sephiroth's place. After a few blocks, he could see the apartment complex in the distance, and Sephiroth's windows dark and large against the gray building. He began an all out sprint.

He bounded up the stairs to Sephiroth's hallway but halted so suddenly the carpet beneath his boots squeaked.

Sephiroth's front door was slightly ajar.

Cloud approached slowly and pushed it open, blinking as it wobbled uselessly on its hinges. He swallowed, looking into the apartment and not seeing anyone and not feeling anyone's presence from within. He somehow felt that he was pushing a boundary. He'd never entered Sephiroth's apartment alone before.

"Seph? Rhonda?" Cloud called gently, waiting at the threshold for a reply.

When there wasn't one, he stepped carefully past the kitchen and down the hall to Sephiroth's bedroom.

The light was on.

"…Seph?"

After strolling around the room, he decided that Rhonda must have taken Sephiroth to the hospital. But which one? And how would he find him? Surely the security at a hospital wouldn't let him slide under the radar as easily as the bustling Shin-Ra building had…

Cloud frowned, and decided to think on the toilet, as all the stress and running had his insides a mess. He went into the bathroom, but stopped in his tracks.

There was blood smeared across the tub floor, a broken mirror, more blood dripped on the counter and floor…

Cloud whimpered loudly when he realized he was standing in some of it. He had a sudden, hope that it wasn't Sephiroth's blood, but maybe an intruder or a paramedic that got too lippy. He quickly exited back into the bedroom and was greeted by a terrified female shout.

Cloud screamed in a higher octave, and found Rhonda clutching her stomach, breathing hard. "Good God, Strife! …You scared the shit out of me!"

Cloud made an unidentifiable, pitiful noise, "Where is he?"

She exhaled and crossed the room, "Seph's on his way to the Shin-Ra building... They have a medical lab there that'll take care of him. I just came back up to get some stuff for him."

"What happened?"

She slid her hands into her pockets. "I'm not sure, yet."

"Is he alright?"

"He's had a really rough night. But he was calmed down enough to sleep when the van left, so that's a good thing."

"How long will he be at the lab?"

"I don't know."

There was an awkward pause. There was the teacher, the nurse, the dyke, the early morning torture master dominatrix herself. Then there was the student, the cadet, the faggot, Sephiroth's first real lover himself. Which one of those things would they be to one another in this moment?

Cloud said, "…I'll make his bag, then."

Rhonda took half a pause before nodding. "Just… basic stuff, like for a hospital stay," She rubbed at her forehead. "Cloud, um…"

Cloud turned, already flipping on the closet light. "Hm?"

"Nothing, hon. I'm gonna get the mess in the bathroom. Fucking Turks can't do anything right..." She grumbled as she left the room, probably in search of a broom.

Cloud wasn't pleased with the vague responses, but said no more as he walked into Sephiroth's closet, and made a sound of disgust before covering his nose and mouth.

The closet absolutely reeked of sugar, and Cloud never in his life imagined that that smell would be offensive, but it was. It was very different from Sephiroth's warm, romantic, lingering cookie scent. No, this one reminded Cloud of ignoring his mother's warnings that too much candy would make his stomach hurt, it was literal smell of that sweet, sea-sick feeling inside. It was almost overpowering.

Jenova's presence had temporarily stained the small room. She watched, knowing she couldn't have touched or entered him, as he had none of her cells to latch onto, and not particularly wanting to. With his big blue eyes, little button nose and spiky shoots of yellow hair, Cloud Strife appeared very rodent-like to her.

Disgusted, her consciousness departed, and the smell was gone.

Instead of fleeing for the hills as he would have surely done if he'd known he was just in such close proximity to a psychopathic alien demon, Cloud only took a deep breath of surprisingly fresh air, figuring the odor had wafted out through the open door. He made a mental note to remind Sephiroth not to store dirty, sweaty clothes in his closet, and went about locating some sort of duffle bag. He accidentally kicked something with his boot, and looked down to find Sephiroth's cell phone lying on the floor. He slid it into his pocket to return to him. Then he found a bag that looked like it had surely seen the dirt of Wutai, and hugged it for a moment before setting to work.

He began pulling clothes off of hangers, folding them loosely and quickly against his hip. As fabulous as Sephiroth looked in skin tight jeans, they probably weren't the best things to lie around and be sick in, so he added only one fashionable ensemble to the bag, and filled the rest with things that were soft and good for sleeping in; cotton t-shirts and drawstring flannel pants.

He also added a pair of Sephiroth's gigantic black and red sneakers, taking care to tuck them underneath the clothes as to not get anything dirty, and he realized he had no socks. He found a few drawers near the back of the closet and discovered the sock drawer easily, throwing several messily balled up pairs into the bag.

He opened the second drawer curiously and found clothes that Sephiroth probably worked out in, plus a very sexy pair of bright solid white, surfer style swimming trunks that didn't look like they got nearly enough use. Dior. Dior swimming trunks. Cloud shook his head in humor, just needing something to smile at. He closed that drawer, decided that Sephiroth didn't need to work out or swim while he recovered from whatever it was that he needed to recover from.

The third drawer made Cloud smile again. Their stuff from Dirty Rubbers, Cloud's little nurse getup, and Sephiroth's rubber gloves, deli hat and apron. Also, the dildo had been thrown in, which Cloud had affectionately named their Boyfriend. Cloud was digging into the drawer farther when his fingers hit something solid. He brushed their fetish clothing out of the way and saw a glimpse of brightly colored Christmas paper. He immediately closed the drawer with a grin, as Cloud Strife was no present-peeker.

And in the drawer underneath that, surprisingly enough, was underwear; all colorful, cute, tight-fitting designer boxer briefs, and Cloud liked them very much… Sephiroth would have looked catastrophically desirable in them. Did he plan on modeling them someday? Did he keep the drawer there to protect his commando-ism secret from the general public in the event of an untimely demise? Did he sometimes wear underwear? Were they a gift from someone with impeccable taste?

Cloud didn't know. He didn't know why Sephiroth had a drawer full of underwear.

Finally, after all the drama of the evening, Cloud sobbed loudly.

"…Cloud?" Rhonda asked carefully, peeking into the closet.

"I'm alright, I just found some underwear," Cloud sniffed.

"Okaaay... well, hurry up. I wanna be out of here in two minutes."

Feeling the bag was complete, he began to exit the closet before he paused. Uniforms. Sephiroth might feel the need to have one handy.

He was more precise in the way he folded up a pair of leather pants and one of the SOLDIER belts, plus all the straps and extra bells and whistles to hold everything in place. He left the iconic shoulder armor, as he didn't have enough room in the bag. He draped one of the long leather coats over his shoulder, trying not to let it touch the floor, and tucked a pair of the thigh high boots under his arm.

He laid everything on the bed and went to the bathroom, finding Rhonda with a broom and dustpan, just finishing cleaning up the glass.

The blood was gone.

Cloud smiled at her, having nothing at all to say as he took Sephiroth's toothbrush and toothpaste, his shower stuff, and his Proactive – the essentials. He stored the personal items in an outside pocket on the duffle bag, and pulled the strap across his chest, folding the heavy leather coat and boots in his arms.

"Okay, I think that's it…" Cloud thought out loud, before noticing Sephiroth's wallet and keys on the nightstand. He carefully added those to his pocket as well, his stomach jolting a bit, as these items seemed far more personal than socks or mysterious underwear.

Rhonda shut off all the lights and Cloud locked the door behind them.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"…Aw, shit."

Nurse Rhonda had been dead asleep when she jolted awake. She had muted her cell phone earlier that afternoon during Julie's lab appointment, and the realization that her phone had been left on silent for the entire day roused her from sleep.

"What?" Julie asked, restless and awake because the babies were restless and awake, and so was passing the time cleaning her automatic rifles in bed.

"I left my stupid phone off..." Rhonda grumbled, lifting herself out of bed to search for it.

"Bad girl," Julie clucked nonchalantly, peering down the barrel before blowing into it.

Rhonda searched through the pockets of her crumpled jeans on the floor until she found it, and sure enough, the damn thing had been blowing up all night. She frowned, as most of the calls were from Sephiroth.

She was already pulling on said crumpled jeans as she listened to her messages.

The most recent from Zack, asking her to go check on Sephiroth.

One from Elena, asking her to go check on Sephiroth.

One from a young and frightened sounding Turk from Sephiroth' surveillance team, asking if he should proceed with caution. It was common knowledge that Sephiroth had warned the Turks with threat of death never to approach him at home, but both Zack and Elena were yelling at them to check on him.

And then, a dozen or so from Sephiroth himself. Slow messages that were slurred, confused…

"Put that back together and load it," Rhonda commanded Julie, whose puzzled facial expression didn't match her quickened and skilled hand movements.

"Why? What happened?" Julie naturally inquired before smacking her palm against the full magazine and throwing it to Rhonda.

"I'll call you later," she answered, ignoring the question as she finished tying her sneakers.

"Oh, that's so typical!" Julie roared, following her down the stairs, "Gotta hog all the action just because I'm pregnant! I don't think so! If there's some shit going down I wanna know about it – "

"Just go back to bed!" Rhonda commanded Julie in misplaced frustration as she fled their home as fast as she could, leaving her partner looking forlorn on the stoop of their townhouse.

"Can't you just tell me what it is?" Julie called, sounding young and curious. "A monster? A bomb threat? Terrorists? It's fucking terrorists, isn't it?"

"It's just Sephiroth." Rhonda called, already small in the distance.

She ran into a little bit of trouble breaking down his front door, as the damn thing was made out of iron. She wondered briefly if shooting off the handle worked like in the movies, but she didn't want to open fire in Sephiroth's complex. Not unless she had to.

Then she heard a mousy, yet masculine voice, "R-Rhonda? Nurse Rhonda? Sir?"

Rhonda turned to see a trio of baby Turks huddled at the top of the stairs. One was husky, handsome blonde. One was a lanky, tall, dark haired thing. The third had spiked brown hair that he had earnestly attempted to gel down. She couldn't recall their names, but instantly recognized them from previous years in her running classes. They were junior Turks, now. Their shoes were still shiny. The spiky one was shaking a little bit.

Precious!

She easily batted away the urge to cuddle them, "What do you numb fucks want?"

"Julie and Elena and Zack said…" the tallest one cooed, digging his toe into the floor.

Rhonda smiled, "You're Sephiroth's Turk surveillance team?"

They all nodded, quivering with fear that she'd order them to do some sort of physical activity for interfering in whatever she was doing. It warmed Rhonda's heart to know she had such an effect on supposedly grown men.

"Get your Charlie's Angels asses over here and help me kick in this door! NOW!"

The three baby Turks hopped to it, and with their combined efforts, the door went wobbling halfway off the hinges.

"You boys stay here until I give you the word."

"Yes, sir!" The three readily agreed.

She went to Sephiroth's bedroom immediately, and refused the urge to tuck her nose under the collar of her shirt to escape the acrid Jenova sugar odor. She'd smelled it before, and she figured she'd smell it again.

She marched to his closet door and fearlessly threw it open.

Sephiroth froze as if he were a teenager that had been caught masturbating. The fact that he was currently choking himself blue did nothing to quell that particular illusion.

But she knew that Sephiroth would have heard her coming, and expected her, at least eventually. It was Jenova that was surprised. For all of the being's greater intelligence, she was incredibly linear, often so focused and obsessed with Sephiroth that she often didn't even realize other people were in the room. So intelligent, and yet rather simple minded.

Using that precious moment of shock to her advantage, Rhonda cocked the rifle and shot Sephiroth in the right shoulder.

As she'd hoped, the hand let go of the belt around his neck. Sephiroth gasped sharply, but it didn't echo with pain, he was getting in some much needed air.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart!" Rhonda tsked anyways.

Sephiroth, sharing half of his body with an alien being, actually managed to roll his eyes.

It was a fact that Jenova absolutely abhorred pain that she didn't inflict herself, but the bullet wasn't nearly enough to drive her presence from Sephiroth completely. To be exorcised out of Sephiroth, Jenova usually needed to feel that his body was in peril of dying, from which she would flee him like a rat off of a sinking ship. When he was a child, electric shock therapy had been useful, but as a teenager, he had to be all but torn apart. Then they had found that the slowing down of his vital systems, simulating the shut down of the body before death was the perfect one-two punch of getting rid of Jenova and calming Sephiroth, hence the tranq prescription.

He was slowed down alright, the fact that he actually took a bullet was proof enough of that, but Jenova was still kicking through his system. Rhonda didn't want to have to shoot him again, but she watched his eerie, unnatural body movements as he stood up on two feet, half of him exhausted and lagging, the other half quick and alert.

Rhonda shot him again, this time in his right thigh. Sephiroth crumpled to the floor.

She didn't give him a chance to start crawling; Rhonda emptied the rifle into him.

He laid there for a few moments in the heavy, buzzing quiet and she didn't budge, only kept her now useless weapon aimed.

It was awfully easy.

Could Jenova be getting smarter? It was never in her nature to attempt to trick anyone.. not yet. And Rhonda knew that herself and three Turks would be no match for him if he lost consciousness if Jenova completely took over. In fact, she was glad that the babies were too scared to enter this apartment on their own. Half of Sephiroth would have been enough to tear them to pieces.

Her palm was slick with sweat and she curled it around the gun tighter, "…Seph?"

"...All clear," Sephiroth moaned slowly against the floor.

Rhonda threw the rifle over her shoulder with a relieved smile, "Tuuurkeys!" She called, rolling Sephiroth over onto his back, quickly tearing off pieces of his thin cotton v neck to dab at his wounds. They were already closing on their own and rejecting the bullets, but it was too slow for her taste. She didn't want to risk an infection; Sephiroth didn't do well with it.

The three young Turks were terrified at the sound of gunshots in Sephiroth's apartment, and probably a little terrified to even be in Sephiroth's apartment. They were all so green that Rhonda wondered if they'd even fired their own guns, yet. As they popped their heads into the door one by one, Rhonda waved them over.

"General!" They all saluted.

Sephiroth's green eyes rolled over to them, and narrowed. From somewhere deep in his muscular chest came a rumbled sound of warning. All three gulped simultaneously.

Rhonda couldn't even begin to stifle a chuckle at that. "I want you two to start a clean up. And I want blondie to call the Shin-Ra building and get a medical van over here for the General. Do it!"

They scattered, all three bumping into each other. Two returned with cleaning supplies found in Sephiroth's kitchen and got to work mopping up the blood on the floor.

Rhonda gingerly undid the belt around Sephiroth's neck while they waited, his long, butterfly eyelashes batting rapidly, obviously trying to keep himself awake and aware until further help arrived. That was a good idea. If Jenova decided to re-enter, he would probably have her head ripped off before she realized what had happened.

"Sorry I didn't pick up," Rhonda said to him, initiating conversation.

"S'okay," Sephiroth said slowly, looking for all the world to see like little kid trying to stay awake during late night T.V., "…N'ver been shot before."

Rhonda tugged on Sephiroth's ear. "I told you this would happen."

Sephiroth frowned hard. "…I know."

"If you would done the mako dialysis when we told you to, when I told you to, it wouldn't have happened at all."

"I know."

"This could have been a crisis situation," Rhonda muttered, still fussing over his wounds to ease her nerves.

"…S'been a long time. Years," Sephiroth mused, sounding very young as he stared at the ceiling. "…Thought maybe I got better."

"You never will!" Rhonda ranted at him, plucking out a couple of the bullets that had halfway pushed themselves out of his skin. "This is something you have to deal with for the rest of your life. So do us all a favor and stop ignoring it."

Sephiroth's silver eyebrows knitted, turning up slightly. "'Kay."

"And stop being such a cock when we tell you that you need a procedure. I know it hurts, and it's no fun, but Jesus Christ! This isn't any fun, either!"

Sephiroth smiled, and Rhonda knew it for what it was; the smile of a SOLDIER after a successful battle. "…S'kinda fun."

That earned him a sharp yank on his cheek. "No. Seeing you hurt isn't any fun at all. I love you," Rhonda said roughly, her fingers pushing the sweat damp fringe off of his forehead to plant a kiss there.

Sephiroth's expression didn't change. "…Nuh-uh."

"Yes huh," Rhonda argued, slapping his cheek gently. "We all love you, ya know. We do. Me and Julie and Elena and Cessnei. And Zack and Angeal and Genesis. Maybe even that miserable faggot Rufus. And you know who loves you the most of all."

Sephiroth was silent for a long while, so long that Rhonda wondered if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then he said thoughtfully, "S'fucked up."

Rhonda took his chin and wiggled his face when his eyes fluttered closed again. "What's fucked up?"

"I fucked up."

"Specify. You fuck up a quite a lot."

Sephiroth only peered up at the ceiling, narrowing his eyes shrewdly. Rhonda's demeanor softened when she realized they were almost brimming with tears, and he choked softly. "I fuck'did up with Cloud. I shoulda said it."

"…That you love him?"

Sephiroth nodded painfully, swallowing as though it hurt, and it probably did if the welts on his throat were any indication. Then, after a moment of slow, hazy drug-induced non-filtering of emotions, he shook his head slowly. "I n'ver shoulda. He doesn't know anythin'..."

"He absolutely adores you. He knows that."

Sephiroth closed his eyes, only to quickly open them again when he felt himself immediately begin to slip out of consciousness. The quick blink caused one fat tear to slip almost unnoticed down the side of his face. "But Baby's jusso little. An'I'm way too big. I'm so fuckin' big."

Rhonda wiped away the rogue evidence of emotion with her thumb, then cleared her own throat of a threatening gale of emotional hiccupping. "…I thought that was an asset for guys."

Sephiroth didn't get the joke immediately, but he smiled humorlessly up at Rhonda, exhaling a little. "What iffI hurt 'im?"

"Don't be dramatic."

"M'not," Sephiroth swallowed gravely. "I could've killed 'im. Like ya said, what if it was a crississitu... a crissisutitian... a crisssscross salutation..."

Sephiroth was having a great deal of difficulty saying 'crisis situation', so Rhonda tugged on his hair again, just for the hell of it, "It won't ever happen if you take care of yourself, and let us take care of you. Which you will do from now on. What are you gonna do? I wanna hear you say it."

"Make more visits to tha lab," Sephiroth grimaced.

"Fill out your daily psychological journals, don't just write a bunch of bullshit ten minutes before your appointments," Rhonda ticked off on her fingers.

"Take all my meds. Eeeveryday," Sephiroth grumbled.

"Less greasy food," Rhonda decided sternly.

"More sleep," Sephiroth sighed.

"Less stress," Rhonda ticked, the old topic of Zack taking on more responsibility as his second in command fresh in her meaning.

They were quiet for a moment, thinking of all the wonderful and healthy things that Sephiroth may or may not do when he suddenly broke out in a grin. "More sex!"

He chuckled when Rhonda slapped his cheek again, even though he was right. Sex released endorphins, which Jenova was repelled by. Sephiroth's expression suddenly changed, closing off a little bit into a wry smile as a shadow fell over the both of them, and a gum popping Zack smiled down. "And here I thought you were bullet proof."

"I am," Sephiroth corrected decisively.

Zack's smiled warmed, "I came down with the van. The lab is all ready to roll out the red carpet."

Sephiroth sighed, "Y'whatever."

"Can you walk?" Zack asked uncertainly.

"A'course I can..." Sephiroth groaned, sitting up painfully slowly. Rhonda's trained eyes could see the tranquilizers were taking stronger effect the more Sephiroth tried to move.

Rhonda pouted, "I can make the baby Turks give you a piggyback ride downstairs…?"

Sephiroth only grunted grumpily, waving his arms as though he were batting the suggestion away, and scooted up to his feet. "Shit. I need… shit... I need my fuckin' phone. Shit."

Rhonda only gave him a gentle push that was really a guarded means of support. "Don't worry, I'll come back for your shit in a minute."

Sephiroth shook his head a little, but let himself be guided towards the door. "But I needta call him, he's ... I dunno where Baby's at."

Zack laughed softly, "Cloud? He's probably banging on every door in Midgar to see if Rhonda's inside."

Rhonda frowned, "What?"

Sephiroth held onto the hand rail and stumbled gracefully down the stairs. "I toldim to findja."

Rhonda groaned loudly, "Oh, great. When?"

Sephiroth had no concept of time or space at that point. "…Little while ago."

Zack walked down, slowly and nearby Sephiroth, "He was tearing through HQ last I saw him. Fierce little motherfucker when he wants to be – he manhandled me like a piece of meat! Did you hear what I said, Seph? Cloud manhandled me!"

The drugs almost caused Sephiroth to shed another tear at the thought.

Rhonda slapped Zack's arm. "I'm gonna manhandle you if you don't shut up, you're distracting him. Don't worry, Sephy, I'll keep an eye out for Cloud."

"…Okay..." Sephiroth agreed, his usual growling monotone so dreamy and soft-hearted that Zack and Rhonda both held back snickering. They'd save it for later, when Sephiroth was sober and could be fully embarrassed at his drugged up and flighty behavior.

Zack decided to press his luck anyways. "Speaking of your loverboy, has he come up with any good pet names for you, yet?"

Sephiroth smiled. "Pretty. He'scalled me pretty."

Zack's eyes rolled back in his head, and Rhonda was certain that he must have just creamed some area of his brain. His ice blue eyes then flicked to Rhonda, who got the hint.

She coughed a little. "Hey, um…has Cloud turned out to be a little butch, or what?"

Sephiroth hummed as if he were considering it, then declared, "He can't reach it, s'kinda short."

Rhonda and Zack were completely silent, but almost wet themselves.

They were almost to the van, following behind Sephiroth whose usual confident and slightly sexualized strut had turned into a drunken college-girls-gone-wild stumble, but she had one more good question. Something that she and Julie had discussed as lesbians, and were dying to know.

"So Seph, tell me… when you and Cloud get it on… where does his thing go?"

"In my mouth."

Zack and Rhonda forgot to laugh. They were baffled.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud had never been patted down before, but he felt that the security to the lab was awfully liberal in the crotch area. Seriously. His pants were tight enough to creep halfway up his ass, there wasn't room for much else but meat.

But he was obedient in removing his shoes, then his socks, then his hoodie, then his shirt, and even let them peek down the back of his jeans with a flash light.

"Pull them down and bend over onto the table, please."

There was an unmistakable snap of a latex glove.

"Is this really necessary?" Cloud asked, gingerly beginning to unzip.

"It's strictly protocol," the older one answered.

He obeyed, hoping Sephiroth would understand why he needed to let two strange men peer up his asshole with a flashlight. He needed to see him, and if this was what he needed to do in order to see him, he'd do it. But he didn't have to be happy about it, and never took his eyes off of the intruders, peering shrewdly down over his shoulder as they got an eyeful of things previously only seen by his mother, and the General. While one security guard did this, another gave his crotch yet more seemingly uninterested pats.

I need an adult! Cloud gulped.

They asked him for his ID, and he took his school badge out of his back pocket and showed it to them. After they ran him through the system, they wiggled the card, fucking tasted it, and held it up to the light.

Finally, Cloud was given clearance to be on the medical floor. He exited the security office feeling rather violated and ultimately unfulfilled, before stopping to scan around for Rhonda.

She had already swung into action, her hair pulled back into a fierce ponytail and a lab coat donned. She waited loosely around the entrance for Cloud, and made eye contact with him before turning away and storming into the strange darkness of the place. Cloud hoped that was a sign for him to follow, because there was no way he was leaving her side.

The lab was a very noisy place, nothing like any hospital Cloud had ever been in. There was an ambiance of strongly humming machinery, loud chattering conversations between the doctors walking to and fro, and cries of agony from whatever creatures were currently being worked on.

Cloud tried to drown out the anguished noises with his mental jukebox, but it was difficult, as some part of his brain reveled in the noises, fascinated by hearing another creature's pain, while the rest of his person revolted against it. He'd never had a strong stance on animal testing, but he was now leaning towards the PETA end of things. Cloud sighed in relief though, knowing that Sephiroth was the General, and that he'd be very well taken care of.

He followed Rhonda around the compound-like area, keeping his eyes on her back and attempting not to peek nosily into doorways or down corridors.

Rhonda finally stopped to open a door and he followed her into a small, completely stark hospital-like room. Sephiroth was lying in bed like an angel, graceful even in his sleep.

"He's gonna be out for a long while," Rhonda told Cloud. "Probably a few days, so don't worry."

Cloud let out a quiet sigh of relief just to see him. The solidness, the wholeness of him. The rise and fall of his chest. Cloud went to the side of his bed and curled his hand into Sephiroth's limp, sleeping one, entering the realm of his heat. It was intense to the point of feverishness when he slept, and Cloud could remember the burning at his back when Sephiroth's long, lean frame enveloped his.

Cloud smiled fondly until Rhonda flipped on a tiny, unobtrusive light next to his bed, illuminating the room further than just the glow of machinery.

"Oh, my God!" Cloud gasped, then bellowed, "Jesus Christ!"

Rhonda jumped a mile into the air. "What?"

"What did they do to his HAIR!?" Cloud lamented.

Someone had haphazardly buzzed two small vertical strips of sliver clean off, one on each side of Sephiroth's temple. In place of luscious silver silk, were multicolored tubes. The Cloud could see that his beautiful face was cut and scratched, open wounds dried with blood, and covered from the nose down in a large, ugly breathing mask. Bandages dotted along his muscular arms, and an IV protruded from one surprisingly delicate inner elbow, along with several more multicolored wires.

Rhonda rubbed her palm between Cloud's tense shoulder blades, "He can probably do some sort of comb over for a little while. The doctors just needed to get to plugs."

Cloud gasped helplessly and gently placing his hands on Sephiroth's face, inspecting the damage and running his fingertips over the wires burrowed into his precious lover's scalp, "What's all this shit for? What does it do? Is his brain alright?"

"I don't know what to tell you."

Cloud leveled her a hard glare, "Look. You're my teacher, so I'm sorry to say this, but... I'm not fucking stupid. I love him. If there's something going on with him, I wanna know what it is."

Rhonda knew. She so fucking knew. The look on her face, in her eyes all told that she knew.

But all she said was, "I'll let you know as soon as I do."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Every single day, Cloud went to the lab after school hoping to find an empty bed. However, the man of his dreams was still lying there everyday. It wasn't a coma, the nurses who would talk to him said, reiterating what Rhonda had told him the first night.

Sephiroth was healing himself.

Cloud found out that Sephiroth had been shot, repeatedly. He found out that Sephiroth had experienced a few minutes without oxygen. He found out that time in something called a mako tank would heal him within hours, but he had given a strict order to never be placed in one again. Meaning he had been placed in one before, meaning that in some horrific past event, Sephiroth had been hurt worse than this. Probably in the war.

There were so many experiences that Cloud had yet to share with Sephiroth. What did they have between them? One lopsided declaration of love, a handful of dates, a few hot, blissful, sexual encounters, and hours upon hours of words. But they hadn't gone to the beach, or climbed up a mountain, or played in the snow. They hadn't watched a parade, or shared a birthday cake, or seen a ghost. They hadn't cooked a meal together, or sung together, or gotten a pet together. Sephiroth hadn't seen Cloud become a SOLDIER, yet. They hadn't been on a mission together, yet. Sephiroth hadn't seen Cloud with drumsticks in his back pocket, yet. And surely there were places on Sephiroth's body he had yet to lay his lips on.

He tried to quell any fear he had through the primitive act of touch; lying in Sephiroth's narrow bed, curling around his body, careful of his wires and injuries, lighting kisses over Sephiroth's soft face and neck when he was fortunate enough to be alone with his resting, unresponsive form. He wished he could have kissed his lips, but they were locked away underneath a breathing mask.

It was torture.

At Cam's suggestion, Cloud talked to him, telling him what he normally would about the dramas of the day, telling him not to worry about his army because Zack was taking good care of everybody as the acting General, but to hurry the fuck up anyways and heal because there were people that needed him.

He needed him. He told the man point blank. But the General only slept and slept.

He did move from time to time. Rhonda usually had a new humorous story every day of how Sephiroth either batted away a nurse who was trying to adjust his tubes and was unconsciously tickling him, or of how she would often tuck him under his blanket only to have him kick it right back off. Cloud inquired about the obvious lack of a bedpan, and Rhonda informed him that Sephiroth got up once a day to groggily use the bathroom, wash himself up, and brush his teeth. He'd then lay back down, cooperate in the replacing of all of his wires and tubes, and then promptly fall back to sleep. He said nothing during these extremely brief bouts of consciousness, and was more or less sleepwalking.

Only once in the entire week and a half had Sephiroth stirred in Cloud's presence. Cloud had been lying next to him on his narrow hospital bed doing Mako Science homework, when Sephiroth's right hand had lifted and laid itself on Cloud's thigh, curling to squeeze it affectionately before going slack again.

Cloud had frozen, pen poised, and didn't breathe for nearly a full minute. When his lungs screamed for air, demanding it, he slowly let his breath out, watching Sephiroth's face. He waited for him to come to life, to shout, "Gotcha!" in that strange, beautiful monotone of his.

So unnerving it was, lying there with Sephiroth's hand on his thigh, that Cloud closed his book and seriously pondered whether or not he had placed that hand there himself, only imagining Sephiroth was trying to comfort him from some deep place within himself.

On Wednesday evening, Cloud was ushered to a chair in the far corner of Sephiroth's room. He was beginning to wonder why, when a group of male orderlies came in, moved Sephiroth onto a stretcher, and took him away. One turned back to look at Cloud. "We're doing his dialysis, now. It might be better for you to come back tomorrow."

"Oh," Cloud said, before slowly standing. "Can I watch?"

"Watch...?" The orderly looked at the others, who all shrugged. He turned back, "Sure, c'mon."

Cloud followed them to a large room that was teeming with medical professionals. He already knew Nurse Rhonda had the evening off, so he didn't bother looking for her in the crowd to latch onto. Staying near Sephiroth proved to be a challenge, and then an impossibility as he was taken inside a glass cubicle. Cloud watched with all the others as Sephiroth was stripped down to nothing on the gurney. They were clinical and careful in their actions, although Cloud blushed for him, as he was fully exposed in front of so many strangers – not that he had anything to be ashamed of, of course.

Then, they removed the breathing mask. One doctor hooked a latex-gloved finger onto Sephiroth's bottom lip, parting his mouth to insert a tube down so far down his elegant throat that Cloud shuddered in revulsion. When Sephiroth actually gagged a little bit, silent behind the glass, he felt a fierce spike of protective rage. He swallowed it though, as the doctor seemed satisfied and went on to other duties.

There were tubes cut into Sephiroth's skin in the oddest places. The patches of skin at his temples, the bottoms of his feet, over his heart, the palms of his hands, and his completely smooth armpits. There was very little warning before runny green fluid that Cloud knew from his class to be mako began to get sucked out of Sephiroth's body, tiny chunks and red swirls of blood mixed in. Every so often Sephiroth would tense up a bit, visible in the clenching of his fingers and an arch of his back, in the furrowing of his eyebrows and the constant swallowing of his throat. This all wouldn't have been nearly so hard for Cloud to handle if Sephiroth hadn't started vomiting.

Apparently that's what the tube in his throat was for. Cloud saw his glowing green eyes flutter open and shut, and a look of pure pain mar his features as the thick bile was sucked out of his throat. Out of all the people in that cubicle, only one put a hand to Sephiroth's forehead in the smallest of calming gestures.

Cloud wrapped his arms around himself, an empathetic wave of nausea close to overpowering him. Thankfully, Sephiroth either got too tired to look sickened and pained, or the pain itself ceased, for he settled back down onto the table. Eventually the tubes ran dry, and no more green substance was pumped from him. It was all collected in barrels marked toxic and taken away.

Cloud was slightly dumbfounded, until new barrels were brought into the cubicle and pumped back into Sephiroth's body. The jerking began again, but this time it wasn't in pain, but rather in restlessness.

It had been totally silent in the room for most of this procedure. The windowless and clockless environment didn't communicate the passage of time well, but it had been almost two hours, affording Cloud much time to think. He turned to a white coated doctor standing nearby, not knowing that his voice would echo and carry throughout the room and even clearly into the glass cubicle as well, "In my Mako Science class, we just started learning about metabolics. If they're like, giving him so much at once, and he's sleeping…how's he burning it off? Couldn't he get mako poisoning?"

Without anyone saying a word in response, Cloud was immediately escorted out of the lab by security. He came sheepishly creeping back in the next afternoon, and was quickly snatched up by Nurse Rhonda, who gave him a stern lecture about disrespecting the senior staff.

"Who the fuck do you think you are? You can't boss around the doctors!"

"I didn't boss anyone!" Cloud pled the truth, daring to talk back. "I only asked a question!"

Rhonda went ballistic, "That's worse! Do you know how hard I had to fight for you just to be allowed in here again?! Now drop and give me TWO HUNDRED!"

Cloud had no choice at all but to assume guilt, and obey.

"The doctors know better than you what's best for Sephiroth," Rhonda reminded him as he dropped to his palms and performed all two hundred pushups perfectly. "It might not have been pretty to watch, but it needed to be done. Sephiroth is better now than he's been in a long time."

When Cloud stood, Rhonda spun him towards the direction of Sephiroth's room and swatted him on the ass hard enough to send him up off of his feet.

He had pouted and glowered, rubbing his bottom as he sulked into the room to tell Sephiroth all about it. But first, he checked out the beautiful man's feet and hands. Not a scratch on him. He then looked closely at his face. His eyelids indicated that he was dreaming, and the stillness and tranquility that surrounded him made Cloud assume they were pleasant dreams despite the traumas of the night before.

Instead of disturbing Sephiroth's thoughts with tales of being rough housed by both lab security and Rhonda, he only climbed up on the bed and began to do his homework.

The end of the second week brought about another Friday with little to no hope of kisses or fun. While staring at his book idly during Geometry class, Cloud realized that the very next week was indeed Christmas. He was going to be terribly regretful if Sephiroth awoke just in time for the holiday, and he was unprepared with a gift.

And privately, Cloud was getting awfully… antsy. He hadn't had any sex, nor had he been in the mood for self gratification since last being with Sephiroth, and frankly, awake or asleep, the man was still the hottest creature in the solar system. During the middle of his studies the afternoon before, Cloud had begun to fantasize about doing… things to his unconscious lover.

Lying chastely beside Sephiroth on the bed, Cloud could feel his heat, the strong length of his arm resting against his own, his soft skin and silky hair. In that long moment, he realize that it would be so easy to just… fuck him.

Cloud would pull down his loose drawstring pants, knowing damn well that even in this sleeping state, that big, thick cock would respond to him. He'd suck it, getting it hard and wet while taking the briefest amounts of time to stretch himself out, just the way that Sephiroth had taught him. Then he'd straddle that gorgeous man, take him all the way in… ride him… call his name… work him over until those hard, narrow hips bucked up into him and those eyes opened to look at him.

If that didn't wake the General up, nothing would.

Cloud had become completely erect daydreaming about it, turning his face to inhale Sephiroth's scent. That's when he abruptly decided to call it a night, holding his messenger bag in front of his groin as he gently kissed Sephiroth farewell on his cheek, igniting even more lust within himself before he hobbled out of the lab.

Cloud sat grimacing at his own perversion in the middle of his math class. Sephiroth was terribly sick, full of fresh mako, concentrated on his own healing, and all Cloud could seem to think about was getting him off. He sheepishly decided to take the afternoon off, instead.

He'd been in the lab everyday for nearly ten days. He needed to get outside. Get fresh air. Get away from the beautiful sleeping angel before he went necro.

Christmas shopping would be the perfect distraction. He decided not to bother with the upscale plate malls – anything there Sephiroth could all too easily get if he wanted it, and probably for fucking free. So downtown it was, Cloud's favorite place in the world.

What he wanted to get Sephiroth was something sexy. His clothes were so cozy and casual and soft… the exact polar opposite of his work uniform. He needed some hot pieces that would mesh with his usual, cotton, soft, designer fare. He also needed to get things besides gifts for his beloved; he wanted to find some respectable outerwear for Cam, a treat for Psycho, and something special for his mother.

He would've really liked to have sent his mother a current photo of himself and Sephiroth together. That could still be easily arranged, as posing the General would be no problem in his current state. How creepy would that be!? Kind of like his great grandma's photo album full of their dead relatives propped up for a final photograph.

The association between his sleeping beloved and a bunch of lifeless corpses almost had Cloud doing a u-turn right out of the train station and back to Sephiroth's bedside, but he calmed himself down.

The General wasn't just anybody. He was the strongest man, ever. He was a professional ass kicker. A SOLDIER extraordinaire.

He was going to be fine. As much as he tended to fret and worry, Cloud knew that.

Cloud exited the train station to find familiar streets, and supposed that Dirty Rubbers would be a fine first stop of the afternoon. Taking his time to look through the mass of clothes, and found a lovely, sleeveless v-neck ice blue shirt, a black t-back vest and a leather tie that completed a cute, totally flaming little number that sure to cause mass hysteria if Sephiroth actually wore it. Cloud wasn't sure about Sephiroth's size, as his shoulders were broad, but his waist was so long and narrow. Not to mention he had really big arms. Cloud then wondered if he would have that sexy proportion problem when he became a swordsman, himself.

He decided that if the shirt hit him at a little past his hips, it would fit Sephiroth fine. Medium, it was. He was just going to check out when, humiliatingly enough, he found something that would look really cute on… his mother. It was a dark blue miniskirt with just a little bit of flounce.

She had killer legs, and wore miniskirts often. Did he dare buy her one? He did.

He picked up the skirt and was sold immediately when he saw little nautical touches, like little anchors on the buttons and a red contrast stitch. So cute! As for the size, anything that fit his hips comfortably would have fit her's, as she was the one he got his long legs and slim hips from.

He stole away to the dressing room and tried on the skirt for like, two seconds.

Real quick. On and off. And with a minimal amount of sashaying.

Satisfied and strolling along the sidewalk, he found in a convenience store a pack of lighters with kitten paws on them for Psychopath. They weren't automatic, so he wouldn't be able to lick the flames without assistance, but that was probably just as well – the little cat would probably burn down the dorm in a fit of pyromania.

Further along on his journey, he came across a little shop of knick knacks for the garden. He found a smiling ceramic frog flipping the bird, and decided it would make the most charming addition to his mother's outside smoking area. She never actually used it, because most of the year it was too fucking cold to go outside. But the frog was cute anyways, and she was sure to love it. Plus, it might piss off the neighbors. Two birds with one frog.

Cloud stepped into a large, urban sort of store, and decided to forego outerwear for Cam, and instead picked him up a 'Jane Austin is my Homegirl' t-shirt. Then he lucked into finding a cute light blue top that went well with his mother's new skirt. He also came across a pair of sexy little Superman boxer-briefs for Sephiroth. Even if the underwear drawer was for show, he'd be able to get him to model them at least. Maybe he'd even rip his pants off and reveal them like Clark Kent… glasses and all. Cloud dabbed his nose to check for a nosebleed.

He was tired, but extremely satisfied with his purchases. His shopping work for the Christmas holiday was complete.

That is, until he saw something that made him stop in his tracks, and he was immediately run into by the sidewalk of shoppers behind him, who were none to happy about the new blonde roadblock.

"'Scuse me. So sorry. Cheers," Cloud mumbled, patting and batting everyone away as he stepped closer to the window, and closer to the DVD in question.

His world stopped, and he tore through the entrance of the XTC Adult Specialty Store.

He went right to the window display and plucked the DVD up off of the showcase rack to get a better look at it. He couldn't believe it!

The DVD was titled Military Men, and there, right on the cover… was a male porn star obviously hired due to a physical likeness to Sephiroth! Cloud squinted at the man in wonder, seeing that he was nowhere near as beautiful as the General, but was sporting a fantastic wig, colored contacts, and a cock that almost trumped Sephiroth's …almost. Cloud turned the case over, and covered his mouth with his hand to stop a fierce scream. Right there on the back, an explicit picture of the Sephiroth imposter brutally fucking a man whose long dark hair had been cut and hairsprayed to resemble Zack's!

Cloud held the DVD against his chest in pure wonder. Were his boyfriend and his friend really that famous? He read the caption on the back;

Commander Sitonmyface is the unrivaled leader of the Schlong Army! Follow him and Zed Tight, his second in command, through seven military hours of fucking the eager asses of his army and shoving his power down the throats of the enemy! That's right! Over seven hours of hard cock, heavy artillery, and the most powerful man in the world! Any resemblance to actual persons alive or dead is purely coincidental – all actors over 18! Come bitches, come!!!

It was too good. It was just too fucking good.

He tucked it under his arm, prepared to pay any price for it, when he had a thought. While the pornographers' hearts were in the right places – obviously reverent of Sephiroth's beauty and raw sexuality – Cloud was unsure as to how Sephiroth would take the existence of such an item. Would he be upset? He didn't want to irritate his lover… but then again… if there was an entire porno that he was the focus of, he would definitely want to know about it.

So, he took it to the register, which was being jockeyed by a middle aged woman with a purple cardigan. Cloud laid his selection on the counter with a sheepish smile. Surely she was picturing him doing all sorts of terrifying solo sex acts, and she probably would have been right on the money.

"You know the 45 gil movies are buy one, get one free?" she informed him in a sweet voice.

Cloud was expecting her to ask for an ID that didn't exist, so forgot his embarrassment and made a thoughtful sound, turning around to face the store. There were an awful lot of sweaty breasts and vaginas. He stared into one, and felt himself get a little woozy, "Oi… Is there a comedy section?"

"Fine is the line betwixt comedy and horror."

Cloud snapped his fingers, "Horror! That might actually be better. Does such a thing exist in porn?"

She pointed. "There are some theatrical films along that wall. There should be a few to choose from."

Cloud was impressed. He followed the line her finger made to the wall, and found a few terrible looking features. Pussy Vampire – which seemed to be centered around the mystery of menstruation. Edward Penishands. Jerk My Cock Off, Literally. Semen Demons. Beast Masturbator.

Then Cloud grinned, finding just the thing for his big, sexy spooktard. Night of the Living Cock. And hot dog, it even sported an all male cast.

Then Cloud paused at the register as he was about to hand over his debit card, biting his lip. Raunchy porn for Christmas? The birthday of the Lord and Savior? Was he really becoming this trashy?

No, he wasn't.

He'd give it to Sephiroth on New Year's.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud crept quietly through the lab, sticking to dark corners and scuttling down hallways, knowing that if he were to be seen by a nurse, they would probably kick him out due to the late hour.

Fuck those bitches. He had a man to kiss goodnight.

He silently opened Sephiroth's door and closed it again, leaving his purchases by the door before tiptoeing over to the bed, not bothering with the light.

He crawled up next to Sephiroth, carefully wrapping his warm body in his arms, nuzzling into his neck, "Sorry I didn't come by after school. I had to go find you your Christmas presents. I wanted to say goodnight, though."

Cloud cupped Sephiroth' chin, and his thumb brushed against soft lips.

Lips? Sephiroth's breathing mask was…

"Can I have my presents now?"

Cloud's reaction was greatly delayed, and while his body numbed with initial shock, he felt Sephiroth turn in bed to face him, his strong arms wind tightly around him. He bellowed in a sudden rush of startled fear, then squealed in jubilation, hugging the man fiercely. He finally opened his eyes to find two lovely green sources of glowing light staring down at him, the beautiful, strange cat iris slit wide and relaxed.

"How do you feel?" was the first thing Cloud thought to ask.

"Tons better," Sephiroth answered. He spoke!

Cloud squeezed his neck and shoulders tightly in his grip, unable to wipe the smile from his face. He instead crushed his smiling lips into Sephiroth's. His blue eyes rolled back into his head at the feeling of that soft mouth moving and opening for his tongue, offering a sorely missed taste.

The kiss was hot but brief, Cloud backed his head away to look at Sephiroth. He eagerly ran his hands over Sephiroth's arms and down his side. "When did you wake up?"

"Early this afternoon," Sephiroth said, kissing Cloud's neck and shoulders through his jacket.

Cloud huffed happily, too content truly to worry about his crappy shopping timing, "When do you get to go home?"

"…You got anythin' to do tomorrow?"

"Just be with you," Cloud answered into the side of Sephiroth's neck, reveling in the fact that all the wires were gone from Sephiroth's body. He ran his fingers through his scalp, uninterrupted by plastic. He felt the two little fuzzy patches of shorter hair. They were growing in quickly, but he still tsked sadly.

"They cut your hair…"

"Baby, it could have been much worse," Sephiroth smiled and kissed him again, his thumbs brushing across Cloud's cheekbones to meet his fingers in combing back through his hair. Cloud melted all over again, his body all too easily ignited. He knew he had a similar effect on Sephiroth, if his wandering, greedy hands and hard core of arousal pressed against his hip said anything about it.

When Sephiroth's tongue became dominant and forceful, his sharp teeth plucking at his bottom lip, Cloud knew he had about five seconds of cognitive thought left, and he used it to squirm a little bit, backing away from Sephiroth.

Cloud panted a little, unsurely asking, "…Here?"

After Sephiroth found his meaning, he shook his head against the pillow, "No, I don't wanna have sex. I'm just happy as hell to see you."

Cloud tsked and 'aww'ed sentimentally, nuzzling his forehead against Sephiroth's. Then, realizing what was fully said, he balked quietly, "…You don't wanna have sex?"

"Camera there," Sephiroth informed, motioning to the ceiling above the bed. Then he pointed to the mirror, "Camera there," and then he pointed to the headboard, "Microphone here," and then he pointed to the far corner, "Surround camera over there. Tracks movement in case you somehow get outta the path of the other cameras."

Cloud whispered, suddenly paranoid, "Why are there cameras in your room?"

Sephiroth chuckled, resting his cheek in Cloud's babysoft plumage. "'Cause they wanna know everythin' about me."

"I wanna know everything about you," Cloud murmured.

"What for?" Sephiroth asked with a smile.

"Because..." Cloud nuzzled him just a little bit as he explained, "I want to understand your motivations in life."

Sephiroth blinked a little at that. "...I'll tell you whatever you wanna know, then."

"What was your first word?"

"It was 'no'."

Cloud smiled into his shoulder. "Not at all surprising. Were you a bossy little baby?"

"Prolly."

"Were you cute?"

"Prolly not."

Cloud very much doubted that. "Do you have any pictures of yourself? Like baby pictures or family pictures or anything?"

"No."

Cloud made a slightly disappointed face, then brightened up. "Did you have silver hair all your life?"

"It was always this color, yeah."

"Do you like it?"

Sephiroth hummed. "I've made my peace with it."

"Did you always keep it long like that?"

Sephiroth shrugged a shoulder. "I kept it at my neck most of my life, then it started getting' longer in the war. When I got home after my first tour, it was halfway down my back. So, I got it chopped up to my neck again, but... I sort of missed it. So that was the last time I cut it, about four years ago."

Cloud nuzzled him. "You know it makes you look like an angel, right?"

Sephiroth gave him a cocky grin. "If you say so..."

After a moment of happy quiet, Cloud then asked, "What's your dad's name?"

Sephiroth breathed through his nose. "...What's your dad's name?"

"Aiden Donahue. What's your dad's name?"

"…Vincent Valentine."

"How long do we have to be together, before you think it'd be appropriate for us to meet?"

There was a long pause. "…I already toldja, Cloud. My dad and I don't talk."

"Don't you think you should?" Cloud pressed innocently. "It's almost Christmas."

"Cloud…baby.." Sephiroth began, sitting up on one elbow. He couldn't bear it anymore. The white lies were turning into bigger ones. And if he was to teach Cloud how to protect himself in the event of another attack, he would need to know the truth about him, about his parentage, about his everything. "I have stuff to tell you."

Cloud turned onto his side to sit up on his own elbow. "I know you do."

His lover was selectively intelligent underneath all those blonde spikes. Sephiroth smiled in the face of his own apprehension. "I have a lot of stuff to tell you."

"…Okay, Seph."

Sephiroth told Cloud his life story. The real, entire truth of his history, as much as he had knowledge of. He told Cloud some things that he had never even said out loud before.

Eventually, morning sunlight peeked through the blinds. The two were still awake in the creeping, hesitantly moving light, Cloud lying with his head in Sephiroth's lap.

Sephiroth stroked the hair off of Cloud's forehead, the slow, heavy petting motions calming him. He'd spent a long while weeping.

"Why didn't I already know this?" Cloud finally asked, his voice deep, even and somber. "Did you think I wouldn't want to be with you?"

"It's not like that," Sephiroth stopped petting his forehead, and instead moving his thumbs over Cloud's eyebrows. "It feels good with you. Makes me forget about shit that happened, just makes me happy in the now. I didn't wanna bring this up, make you sad for me."

Cloud wiped his face dry. "Will I still feel good? Now that I know?"

"Always. You always would've."

Cloud sighed in relief, squirming up Sephiroth's body to lie against him. "I'm sorry if it made you sad to tell it all… but it's all over. You're not a monster."

Sephiroth smiled warmly. "Yes, I am."

Cloud smiled back with a little sniff. "Am I the dumb blonde bitch that falls down and gets eaten by the monster?"

"Sure," Sephiroth nodded, then said seriously, "But I don't want you to forget it. I'm not normal, and that'll never go away. It might even get worse."

Cloud pleaded, "Will you please take better care of yourself? Please? For me?"

"I will. I swear."

"I couldn't stand to lose you like that. I wouldn't even be able to cry… I'd break."

Sephiroth held Cloud, not knowing how to respond to such a statement. He kissed him gently, held him, warmed him. It's all he knew how to do.

"So…" Cloud finally said, lifting his head to look around the small room. "Is this where you grew up?"

"Nah," Sephiroth said, then his hand stilled on Cloud's face. "My old room's a closet now."

Cloud giggled quietly at the obvious innuendo about Sephiroth coming out of the closet, and rolled over to lie on his lap, looking up upside down at him in the pink morning light. "Let's not sleep here. Let's stay up and finish whatever you need to here, and go home to sleep."

Sephiroth nodded. "Good deal."

"And let's get a pizza."

"Better deal."

"And eat it in your bed. Naked."

Sephiroth just smiled, resuming his petting.

"And let's do it," Cloud rambled with a sleepy smile. "Please? Over an' over an' over again. Like, even if we don't even feel like doing it anymore."

Sephiroth leaned down into his lap to press Cloud's lips with his. He then kissed Cloud's chin, feeling his soft lips press against his in return.

Cloud was emboldened. "Can I stay with you for Christmas?"

Sephiroth smiled, "Of course you can." Then he pulled away, looking down into the sweetest, most innocent blue eyes in creation. "You love me, Cloud?"

Cloud nodded. "I love you. Do you love me?"

Sephiroth nodded in return, "So much it hurts."

Cloud pulled him down to smear his face with lips and tears. And this time, Sephiroth was absolutely positive that they were happy ones.

And the three baby Turks who had been surveying the conversation for the entire night over a vast spread of chips and dip were all weeping happy tears as well.

"He finally said it!" Marty, the husky one with long blonde hair sniffed.

"Nooo!" Cole, the tall, dark haired one complained, stuffing another salsa'd tortilla chip in his mouth, "He didn't say it, yet. He almost said it."

Jack, the brown haired, typically quiet one was crying the hardest of all. "But he said it as much as he can say it. The General is so... just emotionally… he's been through so much, guys. And worst of all is that he thinks Captain Vin hates him! He'll never know that he visited three times this week!"

Marty slowed down his chewing. "Unless…"

"Nooo waaay!" Cole bellowed, "We cannot interfere in the General's or the Captain's lives. That's like asking to become a human shish kabob, then tossed off a building, while being set on fire."

Marty waved him quiet. "How would they find out if we just happen to steer the General into Captain Vin's path? Yeah? I'm sure if they just see each other in a non- threatening, non-work atmosph –"

Cole rattled his bag purposely over Marty's voice. "Nooo. This isn't some interactive soap opera. We just need to sit here, make sure the General's life isn't threatened, that's all. I wanna be a fully sworn in Turk in six weeks, not kicked out by the Captain or fucking killed by the General. Thanks."

Marty looked incredulously at his future partner. "Where's your soul, man?"

Cole pointed at the third, silent party. "This can be a democracy. What say you, Jack?"

Jack looked from one to the other. He was usually piloting the helicopter, and wasn't exactly used to making decisions, as he preferred to be told what to do. He bit his lip before shrugging. "I mean, if no one ever finds out…"

"It's settled!" Marty shouted joyously. "After the New Years when Captain Vin's schedule isn't so busy... we gotta get those two back in good graces."

Cole pursed his lips, then sighed, "How?"

"We'll think of something."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The apartment reeked when they came lumbering in with the General's luggage, Cloud's overnight bag quickly thrown together at the academy, and armloads of get-well loot.

It wasn't the sugar odor. It was the stench of death.

Sephiroth went to the kitchen to drop the boxes of candy on the counter and to find the source of the smell. Cloud skipped to the bedroom to drop their bags off, then came back into the kitchen, pinching his nose.

It turned out to be the garbage can. He pulled the can out of the under-counter cabinet it was stored in, and thrown in and forgotten about were towels soaked with blood and dirty water. An army of teensy flies were buzzing, mating, shitting, and laying eggs in the filth. Cloud gagged before clamping one hand over his mouth. Sephiroth took it from the apartment immediately, flies and all, and ran it through the snow to the dumpster.

He returned to have sweetness pervade his senses. Cloud had a little bottle of his cologne, the familiarly misty, almost fruity scent that hovered over and mixed deliciously with his natural woodsy musk. He was taking the liberty to spritz it around Sephiroth's kitchen and into the empty garbage bin.

Sephiroth watched him put in a new trash bag and close the cabinet.

Cloud stood up straight and smiled at him, his hip falling against the counter. "I have another question for you."

"Hm?"

"Why do you have a drawer full of underwear in your closet?"

Sephiroth didn't skip a beat. "I wear 'em when I run. It hurts to have my shit bounce."

Cloud didn't skip a beat, either. "What if you have to run on missions?"

"My pants are tight enough to keep it all under control."

Cloud giggled at the thought of those pants being able to handle that much bounce, then declared, "Alright, I have stuff to do. Get on your bed."

"Stuff?" Sephiroth asked, an eyebrow hiked. "What stuff?"

Cloud ignored the question. "And take your shirt off. Nah, just take all your clothes off."

"You're gettin' bossy, short shit."

Cloud snorted, leading Sephiroth to the bedroom by the hand and pointed to the bed. "Strip and sit."

Sephiroth slowly undressed, watching with curiosity as Cloud entered his closet, closing the door behind him. When he came out, he had removed his own shirt and had donned his little nurse hat.

Sephiroth barked on laughter, an edge of nervousness not unnoticed. "What are you up to?"

Cloud adjusted his nurse hat, "I told you. I have stuff to do."

"Like?"

"Standard procedures. Rhonda gave me a to-do list, I've been watching her and the other nurses do this stuff to you all week. She told me to do it immediately when we got home, before we go to bed tonight, and first thing tomorrow."

"I see…" Sephiroth said softly, tracking Cloud with his eyes as he went to Sephiroth's duffle bag and pulled out a small paper sack with the aforementioned list stapled to the front of it.

"Alright," Cloud was all business. "First thing I have to do is check your temperature," He pulled out a simple, old fashioned thermometer and hovered it before Sephiroth's mouth. "Open up, please."

Sephiroth obliged, and chuckled a little in his chest as Cloud ran the tip of is across his bottom lip before pressing it down under his tongue. "Suck on that for a few minutes."

Sephiroth chuckled louder, and a small smile cracked through Cloud's routine as he went back to the list. "Second item… I need to check your blood pressure."

Cloud took out a small, simple blood pressure cuff and ripped it open, wrapping the Velcro around Sephiroth's arm, his fingers lingering over his firm bulge of muscle for a moment before taking up the pressure gauge.

"Breathe normally," Cloud commanded, squeezing the thing until it hugged at Sephiroth's arm like a vise. "…Is that tight enough for you?"

Sephiroth affirmed in his throat with a small smile, and slowly the band loosened, just as his hand became somewhat tingly from blood flow blockage, and Cloud jotted down some numbers.

"Now let's check this…" Cloud thought aloud, sliding the thermometer from between his lips and jotted that down as well. "Know what I learned about you?"

"Can't imagine," Sephiroth smiled, just about ready to attack.

"Your natural body temperature is 105 degrees," Cloud informed him, chewing on his thermometer thoughtfully.

"S'that so?"

Cloud nodded. "I have to listen to your heart, next."

Cloud then pulled out a little miniature stethoscope, putting it into his ears and planting his hand on the bed between Sephiroth's thighs, leaning in close enough to tease Sephiroth's lips with his breath. Cloud opened his mouth to puff hot breath on the cold metal before pressing it to the General's chest.

"Big breath in, and hold it…" Cloud said, smiling as Sephiroth obliged. "…hold it… now let it all go for me..."

They did this three more times, and when Cloud was satisfied he straightened up, letting his fingers idly brush along the underside of Sephiroth's fully erect cock before jotting down his information.

He looked back to the list. "One more thing, and that is to make sure you take this and this." Cloud produced two small bottles of pills and shook out one from each, clasping his fist around them instead of dropping them into Sephiroth's awaiting palm.

Cloud batted his eyelashes at Sephiroth innocently. "Do you need something to swallow these with?"

"You know you're about to get fucked, dontcha?"

"Oh yeah…" Cloud purred with a grin. He dropped them into Sephiroth's palm, which he effortlessly swallowed dry.

When that was done, he snatched Cloud wrists and rolled him onto the bed, trapping him in his rightful place underneath him.

Then, time seemed to slow. Sephiroth let go of Cloud's wrists, letting his hands slid naturally up into silver hair. Their lips collided tenderly, folding and caressing in a freedom that wasn't present in the hospital room.

Cloud was overjoyed to have Sephiroth alive and well, and Sephiroth was frankly grateful to be alive and well. Just before Nurse Rhonda had arrived, he had been certain he was about to die. His thoughts were slow and scattered, but he recalled the quietly ominous feeling of doom, the faraway pain, the fuzzy, muffled terror. He recalled that his greatest regret had nothing to do with money, war, his career, or even Cloud.

Sephiroth's greatest dying regret was never enjoying the company of an animal. How he had longed for a puppy as a little boy. The animals in the lab were always deranged, rabid, or worse – completely beautiful and innocent, and in constant pain. He still wanted a puppy as an adult, but never had the time. Angeal often offered up Zack, but that little dynamic between the two of them always creeped Sephiroth the fuck out, and he refused to refer to Zack as such.

But he remembered almost nothing after the excruciating relief of seeing Rhonda. He was able to recall only a flash of Zack. The subsequent week and a half was a blur of emotional, garbled mako dreams and bits of actual reality. He remembered once coming into full consciousness in the middle of brushing his teeth. A snippet of nurses, a tiny bit of discomfort during the dialysis, and he was a few times aware of Cloud's soft, extremely welcome, hovering presence.

He'd flirted with death in the past; a few bad infections as a child, one bad injury in Wutai, and one other serious, yet heavily monitored brush with Jenova. Now this occasion, by far the worst.

And he was fine. Better than before. Stronger than ever, in fact. He felt good. He felt cleaner, more distanced from Jenova than he had in months. And he even thought his buzzed strips on his head looked kind of cool.

The act of surviving turned Sephiroth on.

Of course, it was mostly Cloud's hips against his, Cloud's lips against his… but his erection strained to fuck away the deep satisfaction of being able to feel Cloud again.

It was a heavy rush, a natural high.

He unhooked Cloud's long legs from around his waist to unbutton, unzip and tug his jeans up off of his legs, leaving them spread wide open in the air. They folded naturally back around Sephiroth's waist, transporting him with lust at the view of Cloud's hard cock, the tiny, pinkish hole tucked between his legs, his tanned skin that was just a little creamier south of his low waist line.

Cloud shifted under Sephiroth's gaze, bringing his legs closer together at the knees. He softly giggled. "You look like you wanna eat me..."

"Just a little," Sephiroth smiled, spreading apart Cloud's knees to duck his head down between them. The taste of Cloud's skin was clean and tinged with a hint of something soft, which Sephiroth decided was lavender. He swirled his tongue around the sweet little protruding bump of Cloud's outie belly button, and sucked loudly along the developing ridges of his abdominal muscles. He couldn't resist in flattering his little lover, throwing his own cute word back at him. "Mmm, looks like baby's gettin' ripped…"

"Seeeph…" He squirmed bashfully. Being spread eagle in the air was fine with Cloud, but making the slightest remark about his abs turned him red as a beet.

Sephiroth couldn't get enough of it. "You're already the sexiest thing ever... but pretty soon here, you're gonna make me fuckin' wish I had a second dick."

"SEEEPH!"

Sephiroth laughed, his hot breath rolling across Cloud's skin, which danced with goosebumps. He made his tongue wide and flat as he curled it across the underside of Cloud's cock, stopping at the end to lap at the flushed head, tasting Cloud's desire already.

Sephiroth's full lips enveloped the sensitive head, and he slurped around it, seeming to get wetter and noisier when Cloud closed his eyes against the sight of it. He was on edge. No, really. He was about to shoot off in his jeans from just the predatory gaze Sephiroth had given him during the nurse routine. Having that beautiful mouth sucking on him like a delicious treat was too much, and it was too soon.

Cloud whimpered, "Slow down, Seph..."

He smiled up at Cloud around a mouthful of his cock, then let it go with a wet pop. "Anxious?"

Cloud nodded sheepishly. "It's been a little while. I wanna last for you."

"You're sixteen," Sephiroth waved at him, unimpressed. "You'll get it back up again in no time."

And then he ducked his head down to continue his merciless sucking, and Cloud wailed in protest, "Seph, no! It feels so good, but mmm… please? I want you inside me…"

Sephiroth tsked, sending a shiver up Cloud's thighs, but decided that he couldn't turn down such a sweet request. He reluctantly let the cock go, bringing his reddened, wet lips up to Cloud's. "Sometime soon I'm gonna stop bein' so nice, ya know."

"It's nice either way," Cloud purred between hot, sticky kisses. "But just this one time…Together?"

Sephiroth smiled, pressing one more kiss onto Cloud's lips before reaching far over to the bedside table. Cloud saw something happen, a tremor go up through Sephiroth's body to his eyes, and they winced almost unnoticeably. He came back with their lube, and rolled his shoulders slightly, bending his neck.

Cloud stuck out his bottom lip, "Aww! Are you sore?"

"Eh," Sephiroth bent his neck the other way for a moment. "Maybe a little, from layin' so long. Nothin' I can't work through."

Cloud beamed. "Can I give you a back rub?!"

"No, I'm alright." Sephiroth shook his head, loving the pretty flush on Cloud's cheeks and chest, and wanting nothing more beyond seeing it go deeper with heat and lust.

"Pretty, let me…" he insisted, pushing Sephiroth gently onto his back.

Sephiroth turned to butter when Cloud called him that. He smiled and rolled over onto his stomach, taking his hair and throwing it into the bed and out of the way. Cloud kissed along his arms and shoulders as he sat down on Sephiroth's ass.

Alert! His brain cried. Hot ass! Repeat, damn hot ass at 6 o'clock! He tried to ignore it, instead feeling along his spine, remembering the strange knot he'd seen last time. His mother had him well taught in the art of working out kinks and rubbing sore feet. She insisted it was payment for giving birth to him. He was glad for the skill, as he could usually reach around his own thin form and rub his own back and shoulders, although it was always nicer having someone else to do it for him. Maybe Sephiroth would return the favor sometime…

He moved the palms of his hands down Sephiroth's broad back, feeling a slight shudder almost immediately. He repeated the movement, this time raking his knuckles in gently, and the shudder came again. He did it a third time, slowly… digging and twisting his knuckles into the muscles of Sephiroth's back.

The General sighed a little, digging his forehead into the mattress.

Fucking hell! Cloud clamped down hard on his lip, reaching down with one hand to squeeze the head of his erection to the point of pain. Feeling calmer, he took a deep breath and with long, thin fingertips, began to work Sephiroth's back muscles.

He found a particularly hard knot of stress right between Sephiroth's shoulder blades, and began messaging it in a calm, smooth circle.

There came a guttural rumble from the mattress. "Harder."

A few of Cloud's fingers slipped. "Wh-where?"

"Right there. Harder."

Cloud took another breath and dug his fingers into the soft skinned tissue, every so often slightly alternating the patterns his fingers made. He heard another long sigh, and the tension pocket dispersed.

He moved upwards to his long neck and wide shoulders, working them deeply, greatly enjoying the gentle squirming of Sephiroth's body. Cloud then curled and dug his fingers into his scalp, and felt himself rise up a little. He turned around to look, and saw that Sephiroth's knees were digging into the mattress, lifting his ass up slightly. Cloud pointed his fingers a little, kneading gently with his nails.

"Oh fuck, yeah."

Cloud snickered softly, and teasingly raked his fingertips out of Sephiroth's hair, and felt his ass lower back down to the mattress. He worked his fingertips down Sephiroth's spine to his tailbone. He'd read in Men's Health that swordsmen carried a lot of stress there from the excellent posture they kept, and it was definitely right in Sephiroth's case.

"Harder."

Cloud couldn't go any harder with his fingertips, so he twisted and dug in with his knuckles.

"Harder." Sephiroth demanded, his knees digging in again to lift Cloud slightly.

He scooted back a little and leaned down with his elbows, digging them both into the spot. Sephiroth hissed, arching a little and nudging Cloud's cock right up between his beautiful ass cheeks. He glanced down curiously, and for the first time, he actually saw Sephiroth's opening.

Cloud blinked a couple of times. It was so cute!

He giggled a little, and must have faltered in his elbow grinding, because Sephiroth made a very dissatisfied noise. It was a noise he never wanted to hear again, so he dug his admittedly bony elbows in until the arching stopped and the tension was gone.

Cloud draped himself over Sephiroth. "Was that good?"

"More," Sephiroth grunted.

Cloud smirked, and gave him an all over rub down, not concentrating on any one place or one movement for too long. He moved flat palms over him, dug his fingers in tiny circles, twisted his knuckles, and tickled with his fingertips. Cloud then gently scratched down the long length of his back with his fingernails.

"Yeah," Sephiroth groaned softly. "Use the nails."

Cloud sighed a little, and did as he was asked. He scratched down his back again, then back up with the backs of them. They were blunt and short, but seemed to do the trick, and thin red lines followed along in his wake, clearing up almost immediately.

"Harder."

Cloud scratched them down again, riding the sudden buck of Sephiroth's ass. His blue eyes rolled back under his eyelashes as he grinded back, forcing his muscular hips back down onto the mattress.

"Damn," Sephiroth cursed, deliberately grinding back up into Cloud, who then raked his nails down again. "Fuck."

Cloud moaned back a little, hardly realizing it. He scratched his nails down Sephiroth's sides, fresh territory. That hot, beautiful, round ass bucked up, and Cloud pushed it back down, clawing another eight bright red lines down Sephiroth's flesh.

He leaned far forward, digging his nails into the hard flesh near Sephiroth's elbows, and raked up his muscular arms to his shoulders, and all the way down to his lower back. Sephiroth's ass rolled up, and Cloud rolled against it. They both groaned in unison, Cloud simply echoing the deep rumble from Sephiroth.

He was leaking across the hot crack of Sephiroth's ass, the little bit of wetness all that he needed to send himself into a heavy frenzy. He clawed Sephiroth's skin again, and when that ass came up, he grinded against it purposely. When he felt a tremor vibrate through Sephiroth's core, Cloud was so close he saw spots in his vision.

Gasping, he dug his nails into Sephiroth's ass, raking their rounded surface from the inside out. Sephiroth let out a deep, booming moan as his ass came up one last time, grinding hard. It was more than enough. Cloud cried out and blew his two week long, stress, love, trauma, and relief-laden load across Sephiroth's backside, the more ambitious spurts shooting his between his shoulder blades.

He panted, falling down onto Sephiroth, who was trembling. Cloud wrapped his arms around him, wondering if maybe he'd come as well, when he caught a glimpse of utterly amused green starlit eyes. He realized the trembling was a very poorly concealed bout of rude laughter.

The noise escaped as soon as Cloud noticed it. "Daaamn, I'm good!"

"…I'm so sorry..." Cloud moaned, his mouth becoming a thin line.

In less than a moment he was on his back, and Sephiroth's already-slick fingers were pushing inside of him, "Don't be sorry," He pressed smiling kisses all over Cloud's face. "It was so fuckin' hot."

Cloud dug his head back into the mattress, still jerking from his abrupt orgasm and jerking anew at the feeling of being gently probed. "It's… embarassing…"

"Stop it," Sephiroth insisted, lapping at Cloud's spent erection, his long fingers burrowing inside of him, sliding and stretching. Cloud moaned freely, not feeling the usual cut-off he felt after an orgasm. It might have been the fingers, or the tongue, or the smell of Sephiroth's cookie-laced sexual musk, but Cloud felt heat pooling around his groin again already. He was in it to win it, as they say.

Sephiroth either had a keen sense of knowing when Cloud was prepared enough, or he simply lost patience, because he gave himself a quick twist of lubricant and loosely hooked Cloud's ankles over his shoulders.

His eyes fluttered closed, and he pushed in. It always seemed to be a pivotal moment when Cloud was breached, echoing the somber, hectic moment in which they lost virginity together. Sephiroth ran his hands up and down Cloud's thighs, stopping to suck the skin on the inside of his knee. Cloud giggled at the ticklish feeling, squirming and bucking against Sephiroth's hips, which was probably the point.

They shared a little laughter, and then Sephiroth licked his lips, setting the rhythm that would drive them to the edges of sanity and propriety. Cloud found it suitable, and showed it by lifting his own hips up a little to meet Sephiroth's, but not wanting to lift too much, as his beloved had found a wonderful, virtually painless angle.

The size of his cock was inescapable, however. Cloud groaned with the smallest of winces as the thickness pushed him apart and slide deep inside, over and over in a waves of beats he couldn't control. He was never exactly certain what to do with his hands during sex, so he usually tucked them beside his chin or hid them in Sephiroth's hair. But he wanted to try something; he reached between their bodies and with both hands, pulled his cheeks apart, somewhat easing the stretching sensation.

"Oh, hell yeah," was Sephiroth's response. "…Spread it open for me."

Cloud gasped in agreement, letting go of one cheek to wrap his fingers around his recently revived arousal, knowing he'd need something big to drive him over the edge a second time.

He gazed up at Sephiroth, his creamy skin gently flushed from arousal and exertion. Sephiroth hissed down at him, kissing the edge of his thigh. It was a sight he didn't always get to enjoy, as he was usually half mindless with lust. Not in his usual state of diminished IQ, he smiled up at Sephiroth, who smiled back. The look of pure desire was unspoiled on his delicate features, and Cloud almost felt as though he were looking up at a powerful incubus. He tightened a little at that thought, and Sephiroth gasped in response, displaying those razor sharp teeth, cementing the illusion.

Cloud let go of himself, and instead gripped the backs of his knees, pulling them down to his chest. Sephiroth took the hint and followed along with them, ever insistent in dipping his cock into Cloud. He wrapped both his legs and arms around Sephiroth's neck.

"I hope you know…" he growled down at Cloud, "I'm poppin' you off... once before we fuck... from now on."

Cloud threw back his head as Sephiroth grinded his hips right against that delicious spot inside him. When his hard beat resumed, Cloud smiled, panting, "How come?"

"You're more with it. I like it," he commented, sticking his tongue out towards Cloud, who obediently opening his mouth and accepted it.

The combined feeling of Sephiroth's cock and tongue slipping in and out of his body, Cloud began to quickly lose that commendable consciousness, the usual haze settling behind his eyes. But he could still speak and comprehend the importance of his words. He knew what he was doing when he said against his lover's lips, "Fuck me..."

Sephiroth planted his hands beside Cloud on the mattress and slapped his hips against Cloud's upturned body. As much stress and trauma as Cloud had been through, Sephiroth had been through quadruple, and while he prided himself on a measure of self control when it was needed, he found his resolve to make this fuck session with Cloud last for eternity quickly slipping away. The massage had done wonders for working out the stresses of the past week. But Sephiroth needed to come, and badly. He needed to feel whole, to transcend reality within his partner.

"Seph… Seph! Fuck me..."

It was better than music, and Sephiroth reached a hand between them to search for Cloud's erection, and bumped into Cloud's hand. He shooed it away, caressing Cloud in unison to his hips.

"Fuck me, Seph!"

"Fuck me back," Sephiroth growled, using the other hand to slap Cloud's tight, round ass.

Cloud immediately obeyed, clinging to Sephiroth with every limb he owned and grinding his hips up into Sephiroth's as they crashed down. Cloud's lips released his beloved's name over and over, marking each time the tip of his thick cock gave a sharp kiss to that place deep within him. Another thick, strained spurt of Cloud's semen washed over Sephiroth's fist, his upturned hips twitched and jolted, his body all tightness and heat.

Sephiroth let go of him, grabbed onto his ankles, and for a few moments, with the most loving, trusting and explicit permission, Sephiroth used Cloud's body for exactly what he needed.

Cloud cried out and grabbed at Sephiroth's arms, utterly spent, but still shivering and entirely caught up in the moment, empathetic in his sharing of it. He watched Sephiroth, his body, his face as he seemed to tighten up into a wire of tension, and then slowly melt.

Sephiroth's cock stalled deep inside him, and Cloud felt the volcanic rush of wet heat. In that moment, Sephiroth's face held the greatest of peace, and he rested his cheek against Cloud's calf, slowly and gently moving his cock within his tight walls, until he eventually pulled out, collapsing onto his little lover.

Kisses were immediate. Cloud's legs were slowly unhooked from his shoulders. Sephiroth's limp weight pressed him into the mattress.

After a breathless passage of time, Sephiroth whispered against Cloud's ear, "You're so good to me, baby."

"It's because I love you."

"You know I do to you, too, right?"

Cloud smiled, "Yes, Sir."

THREE NEW CHAPTER IMAGES!

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch17-OOMPH-103821274

owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch17-Rest-103821375

NSFW … http://www.y-gallery.net/view/488061/

A/N

1- Many thanks to everyone for their generous and uplifting reviews! This is the longest, yet. Well over 18,000 words, yo. Although, I think most of them are curse words.

2- I have to give credit where credit is due. I have an awesome friend (who shall remain nameless to protect his identity) and he's a big old whore. He helped me out quite a bit with the lemon for this chapter. Thank you, you know who you are! Hope it sends your bits into a frenzy!

3- Also, thanks to The Israel Project, who betas not only this beast, but Kittens as well. I love you, genuinely and forever will love your feedback, and I sincerely apologize for the length of this fucking chapter!!


	18. Shacking Up

Pop-pop-pop, bracka..bracka..bracka, dingy-dingy-dingy drruuuuummmm roooooollllllllll, pop-pop-pop-pop!

"That's enough, Cl – "

Bing bing bing boing bing bong bracka-bracka-bracka pop pop pop pop.. pop ..pop!

"You're catching up very well, Cl – "

Doink doink doink dingy doink dingy boom-boom bada bada boom-boom!

"STRIFE! Wrap it up!" Coach Hendrix finally roared.

And fairy dust, fairy dust, fairy dust! Cloud thought to himself as he delicately tapped his final beats on the cymbals.

Their weekly performance assignment was to create an entire song with just a drum kit, and he had chosen the schoolgirl jump rope tune of 'Miss Mary Mack'. The song repeated perpetually, and he'd been playing for nearly five entire minutes, happy as can be to continue on into eternity.

Cloud pranced back to his seat as the rest of the boys did their obligatory applause – most likely clapping due to the fact that it was finally over.

After Cloud got over his the bashfulness that came with inexperience, he fought to play the loudest and longest of all. Coach Hendrix often had to remind him that it wasn't a contest to blow out the class' eardrums.

It was this way especially when Sephiroth had been ill. Cloud would let his conscious mind wander and pound his little heart out, while the more duty-bound parts of his brain soaked in the instructor's knowledge and picked up the material and battle tempos.

And while he was well on his way to becoming quite a good drummer, he was still a beginner in the grand scheme of things. The other boys had chosen more difficult tunes for their drum homework, such as Renold, who pounded out Metallica, or the big douchebag Stanley, who somehow perfectly replicated the Jeopardy final question tune.

Coach Hendrix was pleased with all of them. "Okay guys, I know we only have a few minutes left, but try to keep still. I want to have a short discussion with you."

Like little children, the young men were restless and excitable, as it was their last class before their holiday break. Afternoon physical classes had been gloriously cancelled due to a heavy snowstorm, and while they very easily could have been hardasses and forced them to work through it, they instead gave the boys the gift of freedom.

Cloud was staying with Sephiroth for four days and five nights, and he had promised to take charge of cooking a yummy holiday meal in exchange for room and board. That, and getting fucked constantly.

That wasn't merely an extended sleepover as far as Cloud was concerned. It was a brief glimpse of heaven on Earth, hosted by the most beautiful angel in the sky.

When the news about the class cancellation had broken during his lunch period, Cloud had abandoned his salad and darted back to the Rufus building phone to tell Sephiroth.

"Awesome…" he had murmured, sounding busy and distant. "I'm here until five. Wanna walk over when you're all done?"

"Nah," Cloud said. "Come pick me up."

"'Kay. I'll be there around quarter after five."

Cloud whined, "Noo. Come pick me up at two."

There was a pause. "You're like a ten minute walk away, babe."

"I'll have to carry my stuff," Cloud complained. "And it's fucking freezing!"

"You're a cadet, I could care less. If you don't wanna walk, you'll wait."

Cloud poured his very best sex kitten pout on thick. "…What if I get snowed in…?"

"Snowed in?" Sephiroth chuckled warmly, mildly affected by the sexualized purring in his ear. "You won't be. They clear it out all day with the fuckin' zambonis' or whatever they are."

Cloud flirted shamelessly into the phone. "But what if I dooo? I don't wanna be snowed in all alone… without you…"

"I'll get a shovel and dig you out myself."

"Seeeph!"

"…Fine."

"See you at two!" Cloud sang, smooching the receiver.

"Fuckin' brat…" Sephiroth grunted before hanging up on him.

Cloud grinned to himself in his reverie. He'd have to do something especially nice for Sephiroth tonight… and tomorrow night… and the next night… and the night after that…

His sticky, smug smile was wiped away when he tuned in what Coach Hendrix had wanted to talk to them about. "Now, I don't want you to let it bother you over the holiday break, but after the first of the year, Shin-Ra is deploying troops to Wutai, and up North."

The boys all stared at the coach, wide eyed and looking like a mismatched family of owls.

Coach Hendrix sipped his coffee with a wave of his hand. "Like I said, don't let it bother you. We don't know if there's going to be any action, just know that there might be a travel opportunity coming up for one of you. Stay sharp on your tempos and be ready to rumble, okay?"

"My brother is actually in one of the troops being deployed," Josh, the human wall offered. "He's not worried. They're negotiating for like, crater territory. They want muscle, that's all."

"No way, man," Renold argued. "Wutai's got nukes! They're tryin' to hide 'em in the crater."

"Do you believe everything you read in the tabloids?" Josh asked dryly.

"So what happens if we do have to go?" Cloud asked them all eagerly, his little butt almost wiggling off the edge of his chair.

"You'll find out a week ahead of time," Coach Hendrix offered. "You'll get your gear issued, and you'll travel with a squad of first class SOLDIERs. It's a good opportunity to see how they operate. I've heard of drummer boys earning credits towards Junior SOLDIER just by working well on a drum tour."

Cloud went misty-eyed at all of this information. "Do we get to carry a sword?"

"No," Coach Hendrix said firmly.

"A gun!?" Cloud ventured, biting his fingertips in excitement.

The instructor leaned forward a bit, "A drum. Just a drum."

Renold elbowed a slightly deflated Cloud. "And we get excused from our classwork for howevers long we're gone, yo!"

Cloud perked right up. "Ooh! How long do you usually stay gone?"

Stanley puffed out his broad chest in pride. "One time I was gone for three whole weeks!"

Cloud couldn't even fault the bloated douchebag for that obvious pride, either. He'd be marching around with a hard-on for the rest of his life once he'd seen actual battle.

But if troops were being deployed… Sephiroth might be leaving, as well.

Not even might be. He would be. At least eventually.

Cloud took Coach Hendrix' advice and just tried not to worry about it. He had too much to look forward to, and couldn't worry about what ifs. The bell sounded and the boys scattered, Cloud's feathery spikes bouncing at the front of the pack.

When he got back to his room, Cam was there and gathering up his bags, already having packed them the night before.

"Going so soon?" Cloud asked, throwing his stuff on his bed.

"My dad's already out in the lot," Cam huffed.

"Oh! Before you go!" Cloud chirped, going to his closet and retrieving his and Psycho's prettily wrapped gifts. "Merry Christmas!"

Cam grinned and dropped to his knees to reach under his bed and pull out a gift for Cloud. He had chosen to wrap it up with the school newspaper and held it together with Shin-Ra packing tape.

Cloud took the hand-size parcel slowly, feeling his throat tighten a bit. Never before in his entire life had he a friend who was as genuine as Cam was. Never had he a friend who didn't constantly dare him into humiliating social stunts, or use him for a shoulder to cry on only to turn their backs the moment someone more popular came along, or kept him around for an expendable sidekick to tease at will.

Never had he a friend who actually thought to give him a Christmas gift. It might not have been pretty, but it was fucking amazing.

Cam sensed a shift in the blonde's emotional tides and laughed for no other reason than to end the loaded silence. "Wanna open 'em up now?"

Cloud shook his head violently. "No! It's more fun to wait until Christmas! No peeking!"

Psycho's nose couldn't help it, though. The little wet, pink button twitched and rubbed against the smaller parcel with a red ribbon, which contained his paw print patterned lighters. He purred loudly, "Can I have mine, now?!"

Cam rolled his eyes at Cloud and ripped Psycho's pack of lighters open, taking one out and flicking it on. The little red cat greedily lapped at the flames, and Cam sighed. "His shit's gonna smell like barbeque."

Cloud giggled, scritching Psycho behind his ears. "Be a good boy!"

Psycho's big brown eyes widened sadly, and he turned away from the delicious flame. "Daddy's not comin'?!"

Cloud shook his head, "No. I'm going over to Big Daddy's house."

Psycho's brown eyes narrowed in jealousy. Ever since Psycho had met Sephiroth, he had since referred to him as 'Big Daddy'. Big Daddy had left quite an impression with his ability to create flames without the aid of a lighter, and the kitten had developed a people- crush.

Cam handed Psycho over to Cloud. "I gotta do somethin' wit my hair, or my dad's gonna drive me straight to a fuckin' barber."

Cloud kissed Psycho's furry cheek, who turned his face away in mock disgust although a healthy purr gave away the secret that he liked to be cuddled. "Have you seen your dad since he kicked your ass?"

Cam was in the bathroom mirror, tying his hair that had recently grown down past his chin into a little ponytail at the base of his skull. He then use his fingers to comb any stray strands behind his ears in an earnest attempt to look clean cut. "Naw. Talked to him on tha phone, but dat's it. I'm not too worried, though, just so long as we don't talk 'bout Shin-Ra. Or politics. Or books. Or me beatin' the livin' shit outta dat punkass." He turned away from the mirror with a bright smile.

Psycho was nuzzling Cloud's neck and kneading his claws into his uniform vest when Cam emerged from the bathroom and pried him off. The little cat complained, swore, and meowed wordlessly as he was zipped inside his carrier.

"Quit bitchin'," Cam smiled, holding an arm out to wrap around Cloud's shoulders. Cloud hugged Cam's waist, and turned his face to press a quick, dry kiss to his cheek.

Cam sighed longingly, "…I'm gonna miss spoonin' ya."

Cloud guffawed as Cam shoved him away. He threw his colorful menagerie of bags over his shoulders and picked up Psycho's dreaded carrier, where he was currently having a fit of intense claustrophobia.

He turned to open the door, but first there came a booming knock. Cam snorted and called out, "Who tha mighty godless fuck is knockin' so damn looou – duhhh…"

Cam's confident, volumous voice trailed off when he found Sephiroth on the other side.

Sephiroth was halfway incognito with his nerdy glasses and his dark gray jacket's hood draped over his head. But the long legs clad in leather, the tall boots, the supernaturally green eyes and stray strands of silver were still very telling. There would have surely been a crowd if everyone wasn't in such a busy haste to leave for home.

Cam was stunned. Sephiroth looked down upon him, expressionless. Cloud covered his mouth and grinned maniacally.

He was surprised that Cameron Wedge of all people was stricken with Sephiroth Shock Syndrome. Cloud hadn't anticipated that at all, as Cam never spoke reverently of the General, not in a fanboy sort of way, and especially not after all Cloud had said about him. Cloud wondered if maybe it was just a person's natural reaction to the gorgeous man.

It was Psychopath that joyfully broke the awkward silence. "Big Daddy!"

Cam gingerly set Psycho down before saluting. "Sir."

Sephiroth nodded gracefully. "Wedge, Cloud's friend?"

He nodded, speechless, and bent his knees to pick Psycho's carrier back up. His fingers searched around clumsily for the handle, as Cam was unable to take his eyes off of the statuesque figure filling the doorway. He turned to the side, sliding past the General who entered the room as he exited.

Cloud instinctually reached out for Sephiroth's hand, who gave it to him.

Secretly, Cameron Wedge had always thought that Cloud had exaggerated, or perhaps even fabricated his relationship with Sephiroth. But it was obvious through the subtleties of non verbal communication that the General – the General – was really, truly crazy about Cloud. There was something slightly lascivious in the way his eyes flicked in their sockets, moving across Cloud to take in every inch.

Cam decided that it was high time to splitsky, but not before signing off quickly and respectfully. "Well, so long Cloud… and nice to meetcha, Sir."

"Likewise," Sephiroth returned politely, not taking his eyes off of Cloud.

"Bye…" Cloud called, clearly distracted.

Sephiroth's lips were on Cloud before the tiny echo of the closing door was through vibrating through the small room. "Bad boy. You didn't tell me he was so fuckin' cute."

Cloud gasped in offense and slapped at Sephiroth's arm, then pulled his face down for another taste of his lips. He was slightly out of breath and far too overstimulated when he finally backed away a little. "…What are you doing up here?"

"I didn't feel like waitin' in the truck. The parkin' lot is fuckin' crazy…what?"

Cloud shook his head, but his smile was brimming over and causing his cheeks to glow.

"What?" Sephiroth asked again, suspicious.

"…You have snowflakes on your eyelashes."

Sephiroth pushed up his glasses and made to rub at his eyes with the palm of his hand, but Cloud latched onto it with all his weight. "No! It's cute!"

Sephiroth gave him a deadpan pout, and Cloud leaned forward and kissed his eyes, thus disintegrating the snowflakes. Cloud was a little startled at how thick Sephiroth's eyelashes were, it felt not unlike kissing the bristles of a fanned out paintbrush.

When he was done, he smiled. "Sit. I still need to throw some stuff together and change."

Sephiroth grunted as he sat down on Cloud's bed, choosing it because it was the one that had Cloud's purse lying on it. He put it carefully on the floor and stretched out, crossing his ankles and lacing his hands behind his head.

"I feel so gross. I've been sweating my ass off from the heaters!" Cloud complained, crossing the room and shirking his thick uniform vest off.

Sephiroth watched, and began to think that it wasn't such a bad thing to get away from work for a few minutes to watch Cloud strip. His day had been a busy one, full of preparations for the new years' troop movement. Zack had been the one to make the decision while he was recuperating. While he was a complete moron in most circumstances, Zack had done a truly outstanding job of taking care of business when he was needed most.

In fact, Sephiroth had called Zack in to take care of things while he came to pick up Cloud. Of course, he could have always called upon Genesis or Angeal for their help, but they had their own affairs to handle, and he felt that as a new General, and the youngest in history, he had a big, fat something to prove to the world.

After almost three years of constant work, even Genesis urged him to take some time for himself. Cloud had been excellent in the regard, as Sephiroth was seen lurking around the training rooms and loitering in his own office less and less on his personal time. And the fact that he requested Christmas day completely off and the day after had blown their minds, in the most pleasant of ways. Everyone was glad Sephiroth had something better to do for the holidays than troll the training hall, tricking for opponents – and eventually fighting himself when there were no suitable ones to be found.

Feeling far from the situation and surrounded by the soft scent of Cloud's pillow and unmade sheets, he felt his body relax. With lidded eyes, he watched as Cloud pulled clothes off of hangers in his small, packed-full closet.

Cloud stood on the toes of his red converse, arching up to reach something on the top shelf of his closet. His back bowed in prettily, and his untucked uniform shirt rode up on his side to reveal a flash of tan, tempting skin. Sephiroth's eyes naturally coasted down to Cloud's ass, where his pants were wrapped tight to his body.

Don't do it. Sephiroth warned himself.

"Hey."

Cloud turned, a shirt in his mouth. "Nm?"

"…C'mere."

Too late.

Cloud slowly put down what he was holding and walked to his bed, smiling down at the portrait of gorgeousness that had sprawled across it. "…What?"

"I wanna look atcha," Sephiroth flirted.

Cloud giggled, running his fingers over the booted feet that were hanging off the end of his mattress. He let his fingers coast up the leather to the buckles. Sephiroth made a low noise in response and patted his lap in invitation.

Cloud took it, straddling his hips with a wide grin. "We're not allowed to do it here, you know."

"I'm allowed to look," he defended, tugging on Cloud's tie until he leaned down for a fleeting, bare tease of the lips.

"Maybe I should keep this on…?"

"Nah," Sephiroth purred. "Take it off."

Cloud gave him a sultry smile and made a move to get up off of the bed, before Sephiroth scolded him. "Hey. I didn't tell ya to get up... I toldja to take it off."

Cloud giggled again, blushing at Sephiroth's superior tone, and obediently settled back into his lap. He shyly hooked a finger into the knot of his tie, pulling it away from his neck in a loose oval until it hang around his neck. He didn't pull it off right away, instead he let it hang as he undid his row of red shirt buttons. He took his time undoing them, revealing a chest that was smooth and recently chiseled, a row of shallow, edged out abdominals that led to a sweet, protruding belly button, and two barely there cuts onto his hips that pointed without reserve to the long bulge in his black uniform pants.

Cloud left his shirt and tie hanging from his shoulders and pulled his red belt off and let it fall onto Sephiroth's chest, who made no motion to move it. He only laid there underneath his slowly stripping cadet, thoroughly entertained and fully content to let him reveal what he wanted, at whatever pace he wanted.

Cloud unzipped his pants and leaned back, pulling them off of the beautiful and unusual lines and curves of his body. Sephiroth propped up his legs to make a human chair for him, and he leaned against the strong thighs, pulling his pants off of his legs.

Again with the fucking socks. Sephiroth went fully rigid at the sight of them. By now Cloud damn well knew what they did to him, as was evident when he made direct eye contact with Sephiroth while pulling up and straightening the left one that had bunched down slightly.

Sephiroth's long fingers finally unlaced from behind his head and went to Cloud's shirt, peeling it back off of his narrow, masculine shoulders. The nudity of his lover was too much for even Sephiroth to handle, and he decided that he didn't much care about school policy. He craned his neck up to reach Cloud's lips, finding them hot, soft and open.

He rolled Cloud underneath him, whose nimble, thin fingers were already working on the zipper of his hoodie. He pulled it open and pushed it off of Sephiroth's shoulders, revealing shirtlessness except for two harness belts crossing his chest. It seemed Sephiroth was in full uniform, but had switched out of his leather coat for a simple hoodie in favor of discretion.

Cloud used his fingers to clumsily unhook and de-belt Sephiroth while their lips melted against each other's. Sephiroth's tongue flicked tirelessly against Cloud's, remembering keenly how wonderful it felt to taste him again after the sudden brush with Jenova.

He didn't want to think about that, but the moment he did the mood shifted slightly into something slower and softer.

Cloud ran his hands under the loose SOLDIER belt and separated it from Sephiroth's thin waist. "…Can we do this all vacation long?"

"You'll be fed up with me by Sunday," Sephiroth promised, placing strategic kisses along Cloud's jawline, nipping the soft curve towards his ear. "Right now we need to be kinda quick, though."

"…Yeah…" Cloud agreed, or perhaps urged, his eyes closed and his voice growing dark and husky. "I don't wanna get written up."

The gentle tease brought a smile to Sephiroth, and he moved back a little and up onto his knees to quickly unzip his leather pants, but didn't push them down farther than his upper thighs.

Cloud's brain stalled for a moment as he gazed at the thick erection, amazed as ever that he had such an effect on his lover. Sephiroth smiled smugly, practically watching the gears turn in Cloud's pretty, blonde head.

His blue eyes finally drifted back up to Sephiroth's. "Mm… hang on a minute?"

Sephiroth groaned in protest, but Cloud slipped away to his closet and pulled out a fresh tube of lubricant, peeling the foil wrapper off with his teeth as he quickly returned to the bed.

They reconnected, and Cloud carefully rolled himself underneath Sephiroth, lying face down against the mattress. His back arched out and his knees moved apart expectantly.

Sephiroth kissed his way down the deeply indented line gracing the center of Cloud's narrow back as he quickly handled him, lubing and coaxing his little opening loose with careful fingertips. He looked down at it, caressing the area with loving attention before kneeling down to observe it more closely. He became overcome with his adoration of the blonde creature and his countless lovely attributes.

Gently, Sephiroth pushed his tongue in with his fingers.

"Seph!" Cloud whispered, a blush audible in his voice.

There was nothing in Sephiroth's considerable history to provide him with specific enough depravity to explain his utter enjoyment of licking Cloud. Maybe that was the beauty of it. It wasn't like his little nurse fetish, prompted by a childhood of torture. This was purely his own brain, purely his own perversion, just simply and purely Sephiroth.

He closed his eyes as he withdrew his fingers completely and let his tongue push past the tight circle. The taste was warmer and heavier than that of Cloud's soft skin, but very much the same and incredibly clean, all things considered.

As if reading his mind in reverse, Cloud peeked shyly between his legs, seeing nothing but Sephiroth's long throat working as his long tongue pushed and writhed inside of him, his roughened hands holding him open to provide deeper access.

Cloud mewed. "…Seph? Does it... is it... okay?"

The handsome, hard lined jaw and soft, full lips were wet when they pulled away, looking down to find Cloud's eyes, large, slightly worried and upside down against the mattress. Sephiroth's smile would have been answer enough, but he licked his lips before rumbling truthfully, "You taste like fuckin' candy."

Cloud giggled wildly, attempting to arch away, but instead was held fast as Sephiroth's fingers tightened their hold on him. Looking down the length of his own body, he watched Sephiroth's bright red tongue flick from between his lips and make a delicate trail over his balls and back up to his opening.

Cloud closed his eyes, but didn't shy away from or further question this attention. Sephiroth seemed to be greatly enjoying it, and it felt rather… interesting. Cloud wasn't prepared to admit that it felt good, only because it tickled his keen sense of humiliation too intimately to fully allow him to relax.

This changed drastically, however, when the flicking end of Sephiroth's long tongue actually probed deep enough to briefly and just barely graze the sensitive nerves inside of him. Cloud gave a long, slow little gasp, pushing his legs farther apart.

Sephiroth was surprised to have hit the jackpot. He delved it in again, and this time flicked his tongue against it. Cloud's legs began to tremble, and he decided that enough was enough, but mentally mapped the route for later exploration.

Cloud looked over his shoulder as Sephiroth loomed tall behind him, his face out of sight, seeing only the milky ravine of his abs, the masculine curve of his hips, and the tip of his big, slickened cock rubbing up between his open cheeks.

"Fuck me…" Cloud whispered, restlessly offering himself, pushing back against the hardness that only hinted at invading. "…Fuck my ass…"

Hearing Cloud moan for him to 'fook' his ass was enough to curl Sephiroth's toes inside his boots. He pushed into that undeniable opening, watching as it stretched wide to receive him. He hissed, seeing it, feeling it, hearing Cloud's slightly pained little gasps.

He'd make damn sure that the pain was worth it for Cloud.

When the upturned curve wiggled a little at him, Sephiroth smiled, grabbing at it as he pulled away, only to push gently back in. He was careful at first, as Cloud felt even tighter than usual in this bent over position, making Sephiroth's breath catch in his throat. But when Cloud began to push back at him, he began a quicker pace.

No time to draw it out, given their location, afterall.

He was the General, but that didn't mean he was above scandal. Eating a student's ass and then fucking him in the dorms wasn't professional, couth, or even classy. Despite that, Sephiroth could tell that this was probably a first of many interludes on school grounds. Three years was a long time, afterall. And his physical hunger for Cloud was becoming more insatiable with every touch, every kiss, every soft little Nibelheim-accented groan.

Cloud's back and shoulders moved and flexed with every one of Sephiroth's thrusts, the willing little body too overcome by sensation to remain still. He gripped the bare mattress where the sheet rode up, one blue eye glaring behind his shoulder, dark and narrow with desire.

Sephiroth was about to get down to serious business, when he realized over the ringing in his ears that Cloud's bed was rather squeaky. With every sharp thrust, there was a chorus of groaning beneath them from the used and abused springs. Sephiroth went a bit slower in an effort to quiet them.

Cloud wasn't having it. "More, Seph!"

"S'loud, baby..."

"Don't care!" Cloud groaned, grinding up insistently.

"Just a sec," Sephiroth hushed, and pulled out of Cloud. He got off of the narrow bed and stood on the floor, his knees bumping the edge. Cloud got the hint and turned, crawling backwards until Sephiroth's hands stopped him and he felt the hot, slick hardness push back inside, eager to resume what had been started.

Sephiroth had to bend down considerably to reach Cloud, but he made it work, and the bed quieted its' creaking protest without his weight. He heatedly resumed and all was right with the world, except for Cloud. He was moaning and whimpering against the mattress with very little regard to stealth.

Sephiroth normally craved those particular noises, but now was not the time.

He shushed Cloud gently, running a hand up between his shoulder blades and into the blonde scruff brushing the nape of his neck in an effort to reel him back into reality and out of his mental pornscape. Cloud bit his lip and managed to remain silent for approximately five seconds before mewling anew with every sharp nudge against his prostate, louder than before and blatantly ignoring Sephiroth's urgent shushing.

Sephiroth glanced down to the floor and spotted Cloud's tie lying in a curled pile on top of his pants. He nimbly picked it up with outstretched fingertips, and then leaned forward, waiting until Cloud threw his head back with another restless moan, and took the opportunity to force the thing into his mouth.

"Bite," Sephiroth commanded.

Cloud did, and it succeeded in muffling his moans, but not a distinct squeal of insult.

"Pipe down or I'll stop," Sephiroth said sternly. An outrageous lie!

But, it seemed to work. Cloud panted and whimpered quietly around the tie, the greater effort of keeping his volume under control seeming to send his body into a trembling frenzy. He worked himself against Sephiroth, reaching back to caress Sephiroth's thighs and stomach with his hands, seeming to miss a little bodily contact in this position.

Sephiroth remedied it, bending over him and kissing across his damp, salty shoulders, licking a trail of sweat up into the matted blonde hair dusting his neck. He placed a hand next to Cloud on the bed, the other trailing over his hip, then underneath to Cloud's hard cock, and encased the length in his palm. The school heaters were even affecting him, and he noticed a few drops of his sweat fall onto Cloud's back, and that whenever his hair touched Cloud's damp body, it seemed to stick like spiderwebs.

"Seph," Cloud began to pant around the tie, and he knew well by now how Cloud liked it; long, hard strokes with a little twist at the tip. After a few moments, Cloud bared his teeth, gnawing on his own tie while his small, long fingered hands gripping Sephiroth's, urging the fist around his cock to move just a little faster.

His water colored eyes clamped shut, and with an eerie, still silence, Sephiroth felt him clench and shudder as his body made its' release. Sephiroth yanked the tie out of Cloud's mouth and replaced it with his lips and tongue as he rode him through his own climax. He buckled and curled himself over Cloud in a way that reminded him of lions mating on the Discovery Channel.

Cloud giggled a little at the thought, softening against Sephiroth in every regard. He reached back to cup his head as Sephiroth buried his face in the nape of his neck.

"Love you, Seph…"

"Mmhmm," Sephiroth agreed, squeezing Cloud into another tight, possessive lion-like hug before carefully pulling out. He caught a thick leak of drippage with his fingertips before going to the bathroom to wash up, his trembling legs getting slightly tangled in his pants on the way.

Sephiroth actually would have damn well tripped if Cloud's closet door hadn't been there for him to quickly grab onto. In a split second he caught the door handle and righted himself, then continued to strut into the bathroom as if it never happened.

"I saw that," Cloud informed him.

"Meant you to!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

When two people attempt to go about their day after having sexual intercourse, it's rather obvious, especially if they happen to be head over heels in love with each other.

Sephiroth and Cloud walked through the Shin-Ra building, leaving behind figurative footprints of their recent activities. Sephiroth didn't appear overly mussed, but the lidded, content look on his normally stoic face, and the looseness in his usually tight strut would have been telling enough, but there was currently a severe snowstorm outside and the General was flushed and slightly sweaty under his coat.

Cloud looked like a pint size concubine scuttling along beside him, complete with an overly giggly demeanor and his obvious worship of Sephiroth, his blue eyes tracking his every move. He was even more flushed, with jutting spikes of yellow hair drying with sweat near his temples. In honor of Sephiroth finally being able to look through his closet, he had donned a pair of dark blue skinny jeans and a little red soccer t-shirt, at his lover's request. He also wore the dark gray jacket that Sephiroth had left the office in.

It was obvious to any and all that the two had just fucked, big time.

They entered Sephiroth's office to find Zack working diligently on Sephiroth's computer.

Zack Fair. Working diligently.

"You're startin' to freak me out," Sephiroth declared.

"Just doing my job, boss man," Zack shrugged, peeling himself up off of Sephiroth's chair with a stretch.

Sephiroth reluctantly let go of Cloud's hand, pulling on his fingertips until he was too far to reach as he went to retake his seat. "You've been here since midnight, why dontcha go home?"

Zack made a tired face, running a playful hand through Cloud's hair as he passed to his perch on the windowsill. "I dunno. Just feel like working, lately."

"What are you doing for Christmas?" Cloud chirped, bouncing a little in his shoes as he cleared the collection of office litter out of his way.

Zack smiled, but it was hollow. "Eh, not much."

"Not going back home this year?" Sephiroth asked, ripping open a piece of mail on his desk with his thumb.

"What's with the third degree?" Zack asked, laughing in an imitation of his usual mirth. "I'm just not feeling the Christmas thing this year."

Cloud was currently too full of love to let the subject die. "Did you get anything special for Aerith?"

Zack looked down at the floor. "Nah. Not really."

"Don't tell me she's still pissed about the proposal thing?" Sephiroth asked coolly, half of his attention consumed with reading his mail.

"No, no. She's, um…" Zack tapped his fingers on his thighs uneasily. "We're…"

"What?" Cloud asked, tilting his head. Behind him in the window, snow came down in furious gales, as if in some sort of personal beef from God.

Zack watched, sadness creeping into his features, causing him to look serious and for once, his age. "... Me and Aerith actually split about three weeks ago."

Sephiroth paused, lowering his letter to his lap. Cloud's eyebrows turned up in morbid surprise. They were both wearing precisely the expressions that Zack did not want to see.

"I didn't tell you guys at first because I wasn't sure if it would stick. And then I didn't because this one was sick, and that one was sort of rabid. And then I just didn't feel like talking about it at all, but… it's been almost three weeks!" He shrugged, laughing a little. "I'll be fine! I'm already like, mostly over it."

Sephiroth's eyebrows lowered from their raised, shocked place on his forehead. "You awright?"

"I'm fine."

Cloud frowned. "Have you tried talking to her?"

Zack seemed to really consider it, before slumping against the bookcase. "I know her, and I know the more I call the less she'll want to talk to me. I've been waiting for her to call me. The holidays were always a big deal to her, she liked decorating the church and my apartment. We had traditions, ya know? I was thinking if she wanted me back, she'd at least call me before Christmas…"

"Well, there's still time," Cloud pointed out hopefully.

"I doubt it, sis," Zack looked out the window again. "And it's so fucking cold outside. I know the space heater she has in that stupid church isn't enough. She'd usually stay with me during weather like this. I just wonder where she is… if she's warm enough…"

"I'll throw the bitch in a sack and drag her to your place," Sephiroth offered. Cloud looked at him to see if he was as serious as he sounded… and he was.

Zack chuckled briefly. "I've thought of doing the same thing myself. I know I fucked up, but I don't feel like I fucked up badly enough for her to just… discard me. I mean, I don't drink that much."

Sephiroth winced one eye before he could help himself.

Zack huffed. "You only think I drink a lot because you never drink!"

"Why don't you drink, Seph?" Cloud wondered aloud.

"I choose not to," Sephiroth explained loftily. "Because it tastes like shit."

"But you drink pure espresso!" Cloud laughed.

"True, but it keeps me awake when I need to be. Alcohol serves no purpose."

Cloud smiled. "I'll bet you'd be a happy drunk!"

"I bet he's a serious, philosophical drunk," Zack wagered.

"Find me somethin' that doesn't taste like vomited backwash and maybe you'll find out."

Cloud turned to Zack. "So, you like to drink. I like to drink, too. But… do you have to do it so much?"

"This comin' from a Nibelheim native," Sephiroth chuckled. "When those people tell ya to slow down, you should listen."

Zack crossed his arms. "I don't drink just to get drunk. I just like to… maintain a steady buzz when I'm not working, that's all. It's hard not to cross the line into excess, but I…" Zack blurted, "…need it."

"Alcoholic," Sephiroth decided with a judicial slap on his desk.

Cloud ignored him. "Why do you need it, Zack?"

Zack looked between the two of them slowly, and then pointed at Sephiroth. "If I tell you something, this one has to promise not to laugh!"

Cloud looked at Sephiroth. "Promise not to laugh."

The man shrugged, back to reading his mail. "Fine, I won't laugh. It won't be hard."

"Alright," Zack let out a gust of air. "I'm… a psychic."

Cloud immediately let out a short giggle, and the tinkling sound ripped a dark, involuntary gale of laughter from Sephiroth.

Zack waited for them to quiet down before saying, "Cloud, you used to make out with the television screen whenever Sephiroth was on and your mom wasn't in the room."

Cloud stopped laughing immediately and gawked at Zack. Sephiroth looked over at Cloud and snickered, seeing the truth in his expression.

"And Sephiroth. When you were a cadet, you used to jack off thinking about Bruce Campbell. You still do, sometimes."

Sephiroth's face drained of most of its color, which was not much.

"Seph? Did I ever tell you about the T.V. thing?" Cloud whispered, and then hissed. "And who the fuck is Bruce Campbell?"

"Nobody. And you …mighta mentioned the T.V. thing. Either way, it doesn't prove anythin'. Everyone makes out with me on T.V."

Cloud gasped in shock, disgust, and delight. Sephiroth had never openly referred to himself as a sex icon before!

"Fine, you want more proof?" Zack looked at Cloud with a touch of softness. "Cloud, your first kiss wasn't exactly Sephiroth. You were at a birthday party and someone dared you to kiss a girl who was blindfolded. You put it on her cheek because you thought she'd be disappointed that you'd been her first."

Cloud knew he hadn't told Sephiroth about that one yet, he'd buried that shit deep. When they had taken the blindfold off of her to reveal who she had been kissed by, she had run from the room in humiliation. She then spread a lie that Cloud's breath had reeked, and thus cemented his loneliness for the first half of high school.

As Cloud remembered this, Zack looked at him empathetically, as if he knew.

Well, perhaps he did know. Cloud leaned forward seriously. "Zack… will I make it into SOLDIER?"

Zack shrugged. "I'm useless about the future. All I know is shit about the past."

Sephiroth hummed. "What did I have for breakfast this morning?"

Zack touched his stomach with a slight grimace. "You were running late, so you opened your refrigerator and just sort of... ate anything. Two slices of cold leftover pizza, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a pudding cup, and half a fucking lemon."

"Holy shit," Sephiroth chuckled. "You are a fuckin' psychic."

"You should moonlight at the Psychic Food restaurant!" Cloud cried.

Zack rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. The thing that I can't stand about it, is that sometimes I can… see things that happened a long time ago."

"Like past lives!" Cloud supplied.

"Sometimes, but also other things. Like… okay, right now, standing here… I can feel that Sephiroth has felt a lot of angst in this room. Sometimes I come in and want to cheer him up, even though he isn't sad anymore."

Cloud stuck his bottom lip out at Sephiroth, who shrugged nonchalantly.

"I don't know anything about myself though, or the fucking future. Nothing useful! Everything's already happened, and I can't do anything about it! It drives me crazy, and I'd just rather not deal with it. So, I get drunk, and I lose it."

"Wow!" Cloud mooned, staring at Zack like a mythical creature.

"So, I just don't think a tiny drinking habit should have made her dump me. Like, if I was a better psychic, I would know if she found someone else first…" Zack's hair seemed to deflate a little bit. "Maybe she was just done with me."

"I'll slit his throat," Sephiroth offered. Cloud looked at him again to see if he was serious. He was.

Cloud had a better plan.

He approached Zack and wrapped his arms around his waist. Zack closed his eyes and prepared to lean into a pint sized hug, before crying out in shock. Cloud began digging his hands into his pockets. "Give me your phone."

"Jesus, Cloud!" Zack croaked, but it was too late. Cloud snatched away the cell phone, turned his back on Zack, quickly located the address book, but didn't find any numbers belonging to Aerith, or cuddlebutt, or whatever else he might have nicknamed her.

"What's the number, Zack?" Cloud finally asked.

After a moment of futile hesitation, Zack sighed the digits out, his memorization of them clearly evident.

Cloud put a hand on his hip and stared shrewdly into space, and after a few moments cooed, "Hello Ms. Aerith! This isn't Zack, it's Cloud Strife, Sephiroth's boyfriend," Cloud tilted his head and listened, and then nodded with a smile. "Yes. Yes! You heard about that? …Yeah, Sephiroth's fine, actually. He was out for almost two weeks, but he's had a full recovery, believe you me!"

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes at Cloud with a smile. He and his mother were so fucking much alike.

"Did you know that during the entire time Sephiroth was ill, Zack was actually the General!? Yeah! …And he did a wonderful job, Sephiroth told me all about it! He was so responsible, and even kept up with all his own work. Yeah! So if he hasn't called you, it's probably been because he's been so busy. He's fucking hot as hell, wouldn't you say? Sephiroth's been talking about me growing my hair out, I hope it turns out looking something like Zack's! …What!? Hair spray?! No way, girlfriend, my shit is all natural!…"

Cloud went off on a short tangent, and Zack looked at Sephiroth miserably.

"Also, did you know that Zack's…what? Yeah, he actually is right here. Are you sure you want to talk to him? We could just talk more about him. Like, how he's proved himself to be sooo responsible! And he's totally gotten hotter since you've last seen him, I don't know if it's the cold weather or what, but he's standing right here in his uniform and he's so big and tan and beautiful, he makes you just wanna rip him to pieces!"

Zack's mouth was hanging open, and Sephiroth made a large, unidentifiable noise along the lines of 'waaaoooh!'

"But even though Zack's gone down in history, and he's super hot, and he's such a nice guy… he's sad. He's not looking forward to Christmas, and he seems very lonely, and he didn't say so, but I think he loves you and misses you very much. But look, the reason I called is because tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Sephiroth and I are just going to be alone at his place, why don't the both of you come over and have dinner with us?"

Sephiroth began feverishly shaking his head. Zack's ice blue eyes lit up.

"No, please! I don't mind cooking, just bring some jello or something! …Yeah, Sephiroth's place. Come by at… Oh, I dunno, sevenish. Okay? Say you'll come! You will? Great! See you then! Here's Zack!"

Cloud handed the phone to him.

Zack slowly raised it to his ear. "…Hey…" He chuckled a little. "No, I didn't train him to say all that… Nah… Yeah... So, okay… See you tomorrow night…"

Zack hung up with her and grabbed Cloud into a hug. "…Thank you."

He released Cloud to light up the universe with his smile before opening Sephiroth's door and evacuating with a skip of glee.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The ride home was slow due to horrendous traffic and slick roads. They'd listened to an entire CD and they still had a few more blocks to go.

There was something on the tip of Cloud's tongue, but he didn't know how to say it.

"This is gonna be like…" Cloud tried to choose his words carefully, but ended up blurting out what he originally wanted to say anyways. "Kinda like we're married for the next few days, huh?"

"No, 'cause married people typically hate each other."

"Then, faggots in love and shacking up," Cloud amended.

"Better."

"It'll be over too soon, I know it. Then it'll be back to weekends."

Sephiroth hated this particular conversation. "If there were more hours in the day and more days in the week, it wouldn't be this way."

"I know it's the best we can do. I just wish I could be with you more…" Cloud sighed, looking out the window at the slow moving city. A lady with a stroller walked directly in front of the truck, and Cloud wouldn't have faulted Sephiroth one bit for mowing her down. But he stopped, and now they were trapped at yet another light.

Sephiroth tapped the wheel in thought. "Cloud. What if you couldn't see me for …a couple of months?"

Cloud moaned. "That'd be fucking awful!"

"It's happenin'."

Cloud swallowed, then smiled brightly. "Nuh-uh!"

Sephiroth didn't say anything.

Cloud looked down to his lap, running a finger nervously along the seam of his jeans. "You're leaving…" It wasn't a question.

"I'm sorry, baby."

"…When?"

"In two weeks."

Cloud's heart felt like a heavy boulder in his chest. He was stunned.

"Last time you yelled at me for keepin' it from you. I just wanted to let you know now," Sephiroth rationalized, feeling guilty for dropping a bomb.

Cloud pursed his lips and looked out the window. There were so many things to be happy about! Christmas! Snow! Love! Four days, five nights! He didn't want to let bad news on the horizon spoil it all, but as the tears slipped down his cheeks, he found that he just couldn't help it.

He jumped a little as he felt fingers touch his cheeks. Sephiroth's gloved thumb wiped under his eyes. "I thought you mighta already known."

Cloud's voice was thick. "I did already hear about the deployment. I thought you might have been leaving eventually. Not so goddamn soon."

"I'm here now."

Cloud sniffed and hesitantly looked over at Sephiroth. Sure enough, he was the most beautiful man in existence. For a moment, Cloud's heart wished that Sephiroth could have been uglier. Meaner. Less caring. Anything to make the thought of a lengthy separation easier.

But everything about Sephiroth was perfect. Even the imperfections were perfect. Dammit.

"We have these next few days together," Sephiroth reminded Cloud with a smile. "And then, another week. I'ma see you as much as I can."

"You'll be busy," Cloud bemoaned softly.

"You think I won't make time for you? Gimme a break."

Cloud finally smiled a little, although the corners of his mouth were heavy. "How long do you think you'll be gone… really?"

Sephiroth's chin hit his shoulder in thought. "I need to be there 'til the problem clears up. I really don't know."

"So it might only be one day?" Cloud suggested.

"Don't do that," Sephiroth shook his head. "Don't get your hopes up like that, baby. It'll be a little while."

Cloud wiped his nose with his sleeve and said nothing. A few moments passed, and a song came on the radio that Cloud hadn't heard in ages. He leaned forward to turn it up.

A little time apart. He would use it to its fullest extent, spend more time in the gym, train even harder so that these separations would never, ever happen after his schooling was complete.

As a SOLDIER, he'd be by Sephiroth's side always.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was auctioning off famous, priceless works of art. Big, huge, hideous, ungodly expensive works of art. He was super psyched to have gotten the totally awesome gig as the auction caller.

"This is a totally awesome gig!" he declared into the microphone, and the noble room of snooty bidders looked impressed.

Sephiroth was sitting in the front row. When Cloud noticed him, he waved. "Seph, you're here!"

He smiled. "Not for long, I'm leavin' for work. Kiss me."

Cloud frowned, and spoke into the mic again. "You aren't staying to bid on my art?"

Sephiroth found that extremely amusing for some reason, and couldn't stop chuckling. That was not appropriate behavior for such a high profile auction, and Cloud became quite impatient with him. "Fine, go if you must – but don't distract the other bidders on your way out!"

Sephiroth laughed louder. "Who tha fuck are the other bidders? Should I be jealous?"

"Maybe!" Cloud turned up his nose, as there were probably some rich, gay men in the audience who were about to be thoroughly aroused by his auctioneering skills.

Sephiroth chuckled and put something small on the stage. "I'm leavin' you my credit card. Go get a tree, and whatever you need to make your dinner. There's a key here, too. Awright?"

Cloud eyed the card, then attempted to slide it into his inner lapel pocket with a great amount of class. He ran into difficulty for some strange reason, and it would only bump his chest clumsily.

Sephiroth affectionately took it from his hands and put it back on the stage. "It'll be right here."

"Okay… thank you." He was still miffed that Sephiroth wasn't sticking around for his big auctioneer debut, though. "I wish you'd at least stay and bid."

"I'll bid later," Sephiroth chuckled and kissed his forehead, then his nose, then his lips. It was unbelievably warm, and the world around them responded with a bloom of rosy, pink light. Cloud wanted to leave the stage and follow his lover; he cared very little about the auction anymore.

But Sephiroth put a gentle hand on his chest to stop him. "Go back to sleep."

Seemingly moments later, Cloud woke up alone. As his senses of sight and hearing kicked on full blast, all memories of his dreams vanished. He yawned loudly and kicked his feet under the blankets while checking the clock.

His blonde eyebrows rose a little to see that it was already past ten. But Sephiroth's bed was so comfortable, and the loft was so utterly still and silent, and he was bundled under two comforters that smelled so strongly of his lover that he was surprised the man wasn't in bed with him.

The first night of their holiday had been heavenly. They enjoyed an evening of television, and then had gone to bed early, bundled up together against the snowy weather. They'd spoken softly in the dark, mainly of what was to happen when Sephiroth left, Cloud's grief mostly buried and giving way for educational interest. Sephiroth told him stories, nothing bloody or graphic unless it was also humorous. The deathgrounds of war were apparently ripe for human comedy.

"My teacher said we might be called in for drummerboy duty," Cloud finally said.

"I hope you don't."

"Why?" Cloud asked, propping up on one elbow.

"You'll see our guys fightin', maybe dyin', and you won't really be able to do anything about it, least not in a physical way. That's the frustration of the drummerboys I've talked to. I imagine it'd be just as hard on you."

That was not the answer Cloud had expected. He anticipated Sephiroth to be protective of him, or express a desire to shield his eyes from death or war.

But that's why Cloud was there in the first place. Sephiroth knew that, and respected him enough not to want to save him from his own life's path. After a brief pause of Cloud soaking in the information and Sephiroth soaking in the way Cloud looked in the green city glow, they'd kissed each other so extensively that his lips still ached a little from Sephiroth's sharp, nipping teeth. There was no need for sex, no rush. For once, they had the luxury of time, and enjoyed touching and kissing each other for the simple pleasure of it.

Cloud finally forced himself to roll onto his side and throw his feet off the bed and onto the cold floor. He eyed the credit card lying on the bedside table, knowing it was there and why, but not realizing how exactly he knew.

No matter. He picked it up and looked at the name stamped out onto it. Sephiroth was all it said. He smiled and ran his lips across the surface.

While Cloud stood under the shower head, savoring the intense water pressure and heat, and found his thoughts centered on his mother. He'd written a list with her over the phone of all the things he'd need to cook for Sephiroth, and she had given him a few culinary pointers.

He'd never really been all that great at cooking, nor had he such gusto to create deliciousness before, and it took his mother by surprise. He had explained that Sephiroth was hungry male by nature and that the way he'd truly get enjoyment out of the holiday would most likely be through his stomach.

"You mean he's never celebrated it before? Is he Junish?" she'd asked curiously.

"No, it's not that. He just had sort of a … cold childhood…" Cloud hadn't filled his mother in on the missing gaps of Sephiroth's life that he had only recently been filled in on.

It wasn't anyone else's business to know.

He stood under Sephiroth's blow dryer, thinking about Nibelheim and his family. His mother was hosting that year in lieu of an empty house, and would have all the aunts over, his grandma, his old ass great-uncle, and the assload of cousins. Grandma would be drunk already, surely. There would be arguments about the ingredients to the stuffing, whether or not celery was too overpowering. His infamously identical female cousin Stella was probably being a bratty little twat, as usual. His little cousin Simon was probably sleeping in his bed and playing with his old toys in his absence. His mother was probably laughing her smoker's laugh so loudly it could be heard from blocks away.

A big house full of blondes. Never in his life would he have imagined that hellish annual scenario endearing, but compared to Sephiroth's non-family status… it was.

He didn't require a holiday to cook for Sephiroth and give him gifts, but the obligation of Christmas just made it convenient without seeming weird. Cloud felt very suddenly grown up to be away from home, staying in the house of his lover, planning a romantic holiday versus a big, crowded family affair.

Ready or not, Cloud was a man. A manly man, at that! He flexed in the mirror, admiring his brand new hardware, then went to raid Sephiroth's closet.

He threw on Sephiroth's black Dior turtleneck, a red jacket that was new and stuffed on what Cloud had learned was the 'designer sent it to me and I don't want it' rack.

His upper half was covered in Sephiroth's warm, cuddly clothes, but his own jeans were full of holes, thus he was freezing his little nuts off the moment he stepped outside. The things he did for fashion! …Namely, genital frostbite.

He tucked it to the side the best he could and went to a Christmas tree lot on the edge of the plate. Cloud was afraid there would be a shitty selection so late in the game, but he found one that was perfect. It was taller than Sephiroth, and full with festive bushiness. The tree salesman had cleared his throat when Cloud stood and daydreamed for several long moments before it. It was not just a gorgeous tree, it was Sephiroth's first tree.

And… a very, very expensive tree. But it was completely necessary!

Cloud arranged to have it delivered to Sephiroth's loft, and booked to a department store in search of decorations.

There wasn't very much to choose from so last minute, and what was there was all fancy and priced as such. Nevertheless, it was also completely necessary! Cloud kept mindful not to overdo it, but refused to skimp on the trimmings. He got plenty of bulbs and ribbons and strings of lights and a star, of course. And a Christmas tree stand, and a tree skirt, and special Christmas tree food so it would stay beautiful longer. And some garland and some tinsel and some candy canes and a special ornament that proudly and very cursively declared – Our First Christmas. He took his armload of crap and hauled ass to his next destination.

It would seem that he had arrived at the grocery store just in time to surf the wave of angry housewives doing their last minute feast shopping. Being small and cute had its advantages, as he could slither around the meaner ladies and their screaming children, and charm the nicer ladies with a dimpled smile as he snatched whatever it was he needed. He had a brief run in with a older woman who got a little selfish with the canned yams. He didn't mean to elbow her quite so hard – he was no longer a civilian, afterall – but as she cussed him out, he successfully made off with what he needed.

And he didn't even say he was sorry. Cloud was becoming a Midgarian.

Through stealth and trickery, he wrestled away plenty of items and ingredients for a holiday meal for four, affording plentiful leftovers and delicious munchies for the rest of their time together. He'd fought especially hard for hot chocolate and marshmallows with stars in his eyes, dreaming of the romantic interludes that could occur over it, and made sure to grab a couple of frozen pizzas just in case his meal bombed.

He was horribly laden with bags and ultimately shopped out as he tromped and struggled up the steps to Sephiroth's apartment. He began to fish around for keys when he noticed that the door was already unlocked.

He burst through. "Honey, I'm hooome!"

"Hey," Sephiroth called. "I just got here."

Cloud dropped the bags off of his aching arms with a deep groan just as Sephiroth appeared from the other entrance to the kitchen. In nothing but leather pants. Cloud was so stunned he almost didn't hear him ask, "What the fuck did you buy?"

"Not that much!" Cloud defended when he regained his speaking ability, but then looked at the massive amount of bags littered around his ankles. He unconsciously rubbed his arms, as they felt more sore than after training in the gym. "Urm, I think everything's just kind of bulky, you know? I mean, I only went to three places! I have the receipts somewhere..."

Cloud double checked them before passing them over… and it was too late to retract them and burn them as incriminating evidence.

He had spent over 500 gil of Sephiroth's money.

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes for a moment, but did not complain. He only tossed the receipts onto the counter and began to pick up bags and put food away. "When're you gonna cook for me?"

Cloud smiled, although feeling quite sheepish from his unintentional shopping spree. "I need to start right now, actually! Oh, before I forget…" Cloud took Sephiroth's spare housekey out of his pocket, and held it out.

Sephiroth didn't even look twice at it. "Might as well hang onto it."

Cloud's chest flushed under his clothes. "R-really?…"

"Ya might need to go out again sometime while you're here."

"Oh…" Cloud said, his hopes falling just a notch. He slid the key back in his pocket and happily began to prepare the kitchen to cook. "I found everything we need for Christmas dinner! I'm making kidney casserole, two caramel potato pies, green bean hash, onion rolls…"

Sephiroth had never heard of any of those things, and only nodded absently. Then, he reached into a bag to pull out a huge, cold lump, and was truly shocked when he realized what it was. "Cloud… is this a duck?"

Cloud's face fell. "Oh no. You don't like duck?…"

Sephiroth shrugged one shoulder and examined the shrink wrapped thing. There was still a beak. "I'm not sure, I've never had it… you're not makin' haggis, are you?"

"Nooo! Of course not!" Cloud laughed, relieved. "I promise you'll love everything!"

Sephiroth kissed his cheek in passing. "I promise I'll lie and tell you I do."

That earned him a kick in the shin, and to Sephiroth's SOLDIER senses it felt more like a flirty caress.

"Oh! I am making something I'm sure you like!" Cloud shook a box of macaroni and cheese. Sephiroth was already planning on loading his plate with it. Oops! No room for kidney casserole! Then, Cloud held up a bundle of radishes. "Nibelheim style!"

Sephiroth turned around and began rooting through the bags for any actual sustenance, but found inedible Christmas tree bulbs instead.

"Where's the tree?" Sephiroth asked, searched through some of the larger bags expectantly.

"It should be here soon," Cloud chirped. "…It's not like I could carry it!"

"…How big is it? Like, this?" Sephiroth illustrated a gesture that was approximately as tall as Cloud's combat boots.

"A lil bigger…" Cloud evaded, and before Sephiroth could say anything else, Cloud approached him from the side and began to search through the bags with excitement. "Check out this ornament!"

He showed Sephiroth the one that was commemorating the occasion of their first Christmas. Sephiroth took it from him. "Is that supposed to be us?"

"Yup!"

"We're cartoon dogs in front of a fire?"

Cloud nodded, pressed his cheek into Sephiroth's arm. "Yeah!"

"Are you the one with the pink bow?"

"No. The boy dog is a golden retriever, looks like me," Cloud explained, pointing at the ornament. "She's a Dalmatian. Looks like you."

Sephiroth kissed him.

"You're a dumb fuckin' blonde," was all Sephiroth had to say when their lips came apart, and then turned to scoop up the bags that didn't belong in the kitchen and hauled them out to the living room. "Where do you want all this shit?"

Cloud was glowing. "I don't care. Maybe in front of the window?"

Sephiroth had no complaint and deposited everything there. He'd been expecting it, but it was still a slight shock to him how utterly domestic Cloud was being. Buying groceries, planning meals, blowing through his money. It was terribly, disgustingly cute, and oddly sexy. It made him wonder if it was an act, or if this was the sort of thing he would someday be living with, provided they still made each other burn in three years' time.

As he leaned into the kitchen and watched Cloud begin preparing whatever the fuck it was they were going to eat, he decided he could definitely get used to it. When Cloud noticed himself being watched, he turned and smiled.

Sephiroth helped when he could, but mostly stayed out of Cloud's way. He had two notebook pages full of cooking notes, and seemed to be extremely focused on his task. Unfortunately for Cloud, the more busy he appeared, the more Sephiroth desired him.

Cloud began to whine and bat him away, clearly not in the state of mind to be pawed at. Denied, Sephiroth made his way to the living room and found a movie marathon that seemed divinely designed for him, Horror on the Holy Day, 24 hours of the most grotesque films allowed on network television.

After an amount of time, there was a knock. Cloud bounded to the front door, opened it just a crack, and slipped out. Sephiroth was tempted to get up and peer through his own fucking peephole, but instead turned up his hearing, closing his eyes to add more power to the sense. Cloud was thanking a delivery man as he signed a paper, in his wavy writing. The man wished Cloud a Merry Christmas and split.

Cloud opened the door again and dragged in a tied and bound behemoth of nature. With Sephiroth's help, they set the tree it up in the stand, and very carefully cut the rope away. The tree sprang out and filled a great portion of the room.

"Holy shit," was all Sephiroth could say.

"It looks bigger indoors…" Cloud admitted. "Do you like it?"

Sephiroth wasn't quite sure why it needed to be in his apartment, but generally approved of its existence. "Sure, it's great…"

Cloud made a tiny noise of excitement, "Okay, so we need to put lights on…"

Sephiroth did whatever he was told, and that was to reach things, and to open things. They twined lights around the tree's massive girth, and began hanging bulbs.

Cloud became both curious and bold. "Did, um…" He had never said this name aloud. "Did Vincent ever give you gifts for Christmas?"

"Yeah, he did. Then he stopped."

"When you became a SOLDIER?" Cloud guessed.

"Now one thing I do know about all this bullshit, is that a star goes on the top… think you'll be able to reach it?" Sephiroth grinned.

Cloud sensed the subject was officially closed, so he smiled silently while he located the silver star. Although it wasn't entirely necessary, Sephiroth wrapped an arm around Cloud's thighs and lifted him up.

When Cloud put the star in place, he wrapped his arms around Sephiroth's neck and growled. "I could have reached, ya know…"

Sephiroth kissed the growl away and dropped him onto his feet. "When I was little and watched Christmas specials, I thought it was the dumbest shit I'd ever seen. I didn't get why you needed a tree at all. Then I saw Rudolph, the clay cartoon deer one?"

Cloud grinned. "I'm familiar with it."

Sephiroth nodded, not entirely picking up on the cultural sarcasm. "Well in that one, they had Christmas trees outside. And, that made me think for a long time you needed one to protect the presents from the snow."

"Aww!" Cloud cooed.

Sephiroth was greatly impressed with Cloud's decision to put real candy canes on the tree as decorations, and was even more impressed that it would be acceptable for him to snatch one off to eat whenever the urge presented itself.

The tree was soon complete, and as the finishing touch, Cloud plugged the lights in.

The boys took a moment to admire their work.

Sephiroth spoke first. "So, we put presents under it now?"

Cloud gasped and shook his head. "We can't just put them there. You have to do it when I'm not watching, and I have to do it when you're not watching. You're not allowed to let me see you do it, okay?"

This was something Cloud had pulled out of his ass. But as Sephiroth nodded seriously, he thought that it was probably one of many impromptu traditions that he could just make up on the spot. Like perhaps a blowjob in between each gift that they opened on Christmas morning.

The tree was lovely, but Sephiroth's living room was a disaster. Cloud began to collect boxes to store ornaments in until next year, and Sephiroth grabbed at stray plastic wrappers that were strewn about.

"Did you do anything for other holidays when you were little?" Cloud wondered.

Sephiroth thought about it. "I went trick or treatin' a few times. That was a holiday I could get into."

Cloud smiled. "What did you dress up as?"

Sephiroth thought about it, then confessed. "I was a mad scientist a few times. I was a ghost. I was a cop. And I was a pumpkin once when I was really fuckin' little."

"Pumpkin...?"

Sephiroth picked up on the vibe immediately. "Don't start."

"…There's a wrapper stuck to your sock, pumpkin!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sephiroth woke up to a heavenly aroma. He stretched out on the couch and looked at the clock, although the darkness in the room told him that it had to have been well past six.

He followed his stomach to the kitchen, and on his stove, all six burners had a different pot full of a different item bubbling away inside of it. With the aid of the oven light, he could see the duck sitting inside, covered in what appeared to be and smelled like apples.

It was like Sephiroth had never seen food before. He was prepared to eat everything, ready or not.

Cloud could sense this. He stopped kneading the onion rolls, opened a cabinet and threw a bag of marshmallows to Sephiroth, who tore into it like a hungry, prehistoric carnivore.

Far too soon, there was a knock on the front door. Sephiroth made no move to answer it, because he didn't want either Aerith nor Zack over to begin with.

Cloud delivered a stank ass, sour look to him, and opened the door himself. It was Aerith.

"Hi!" he said to her. "Nice to see you again!"

She obviously wasn't expecting a hug, but seemed happy enough to return it. "You too, Cloud."

"I'm just finishing up, you can go sit in the living room…" They both turned to see Sephiroth taking up an absurd amount of the room's breathing air. "… Or, you can help me if you want?"

"Put me to work," Aerith smiled. "I feel bad you've done all this for us."

"No, it was fun! I don't know how it'll taste, but…" The pleasantries flowed like bullshit tends to do, and when a second knock soon came at the door, Cloud turned to her seriously. "It's Zack. You should answer it."

Aerith paused while stirring the hash. "…Why me?"

"Because he's here to see you, you know that. Answer the door for him."

While they whispered back and forth about it, Zack let himself in as he was accustomed to. He spotted Sephiroth immediately, but could smell someone that was sorely missed. He meandered into the kitchen.

"Hi," Zack said to nobody but her.

Aerith gave a little nod of her head. "Hi."

"You never called," Zack blurted.

"You never called, either."

"Why should I have been the one to call? You dumped me, remember?"

"Maybe if you hadn't been so drunk, you'd remember that I told you to call me when you'd gotten yourself straightened out."

"For your information, I was perfectly sober when we had that conversation. I really think you just make up things to suit yourself, but that's just my humble, drunk ass opinion."

Aerith bit her bottom lip and looked like a very dainty tea kettle that was about to boil over.

Sephiroth had the pot of Nibelheim-style macaroni and cheese, and was hastily spooning it into his mouth as he watched the drama unfold. Cloud tore it away from him and offered an onion roll, instead. Sephiroth stuffed the entire thing in his mouth in three bites and chewed contentedly.

Aerith's main complaint seemed to be that Zack was unthoughtful, selfish, reckless, and unnuturing.

"Chick complaints," Sephiroth drawled through the bread in his mouth.

Zack seemed to feel that Aerith was prudish, controlling, hypocritical, and he was frankly sick to death of her holier than thou attitude.

"Smoking is a harder habit to kick than most people think," Cloud defended.

"Why are we even talking about this?" Aerith demanded. "We've been apart for three weeks! I don't even know why I came here!"

She started towards the door, and Cloud ran to stop her. "Zack is such a wonderful guy, please just –"

The dainty, pretty tea kettle finally, finally burst. "Don't tell me about Zack! I've been with the man for two years! He's a big, fat, baby! He eats, he sleeps, and he doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself!"

"Yes he does!" Sephiroth roared, startling everyone in the room, if not the building. "He's got the biggest fuckin' heart out of anyone I've ever met, you fuckin' miserable sloppy twatted bitch – !"

"Oh, shut up Sephiroth!" Aerith screeched back at him. "You and your crazy, addled, military, Shin-Ra poisoned –!"

"Crazy!? You don't even know half of how fuckin' crazy I am! I'll throw your skinny, useless ass off the roof of this –!"

Zack piped up, "Okay guys, enough, nobody's going to kill anybody!"

Aerith wasn't interested in peace. "Maybe someone is going to get hurt if the General decides to have a war flashback –!"

"If I wanted you dead you'd already be dead –!"

"I'd love to see you try –!"

Sephiroth was slowly but surely approaching, and Cloud touched Aerith's shoulders, extremely worried that there was about to be a crime scene. "Aerith, please…"

"Get your hands off of me!" she admonished. "I don't know who you think you are, anyways! Just because you're sleeping with that man, doesn't mean you – "

Sephiroth let off a visible wave of heat, and suddenly this quarrel seemed to carry some actual weight. "Don't talk to him like that."

Zack actually wrapped both arms around Sephiroth in an effort to keep him from moving anywhere near the girl, who didn't look afraid in the slightest. "I really think we should all take a minute to just chill out. I mean it Seph, chill. And Aerith, shut your mouth!"

Aerith looked as though she had something smart to say back to that, but she paused, and then flushed hot pink. "Zack…Sephiroth, Cloud… I'm sorry. I start my period next week."

And if that wasn't a female's trump card, nothing was. The charge in the atmosphere was immediately canceled out and all three men said the exact same thing. "Oohhh."

Zack put himself between his friend and his ex. "…Let us talk for a minute, alone?"

"Sure," Sephiroth rumbled, and turned into the kitchen.

There was a heavily loaded silence, while Sephiroth grazed and Cloud busied himself with taking his bird out of the oven. Sephiroth was taste testing, and already loading his plate with everything. Complete success! Cloud was incredibly relieved, and poked his head out into the foyer to offer the guests some food before Sephiroth inhaled it all.

He stopped cold in the doorway, because a blatant heterosexual act was happening. A shudder of shock went through Cloud's diaphragm, and it released a gasp just loud enough to be audible. Zack and Aerith's lips came apart and she had the graciousness to look embarrassed.

Zack however, wasn't in the frame of mind to remove his hands from hip, nor her collarbone. "Can we get a plate to go, Cloud?"

Cloud then came to life. "Sure. Sure!"

He quickly made two plates of food, plus a plate of pie and rolls, and covered all three in tin foil. Aerith accepted them with a kiss to Cloud's cheek. "Thank you sweetie, it looks delicious. I'm so sorry I yelled at you."

"No! I understand the period thing," Cloud smiled and waved his hand, unable to stifle a deep blush.

Aerith even went to Sephiroth and pulled him down for a kiss as well. "Sorry."

"S'okay. I like you more, now," Sephiroth admitted.

Zack was unable to speak in English, so opted to grin and make goofy, happy noises as the two of them blew out the door to do whatever it was straight people did. Light candles? Take birth control? Find the clitoris? Whatever.

"Just us!" Cloud shrugged as he closed the door behind them.

"Thank God!" Sephiroth bellowed. "Why the fuck did you invite them, anyways?"

"Because I knew one way or another, they wouldn't be staying long," Cloud smiled. "You are so sexy when you're angry!"

"I wasn't angry, I was hungry. Their drama was standing in the way of dinner," He was still piling an alarming amount of food onto his plate. Cloud decided that there wouldn't be that much leftover, afterall.

The duck, the hash, the rolls, and the macaroni were all great successes. The kidney casserole was a bit runny, but still tasted good. The yams were burnt on the bottom, though. Sephiroth had had no idea that the caramel potato pies were a desert item, and took the one that already had a couple slices taken out of it to the couch, where he then consumed the rest with a spoon.

Cloud ate in an enjoyable silence, although his thoughts were turning slightly dark. I fuckin' love this. I fuckin' love that. Why was Sephiroth so readily able to claim everlasting love and devotion to a stupid pie… but not to him? There was not some glitch in his vocabulary. He could say it. He said he felt that way. So why did he choose not to?

Because he's not a liar. Cloud's darker self suggested. He won't say he loves you because he doesn't. He just wants to fuck you. And it's gonna get old, eventually.

"So good. Thank you," Sephiroth smiled, pressing a kiss to Cloud's cheek, perfectly oblivious to his coating of inner angst. He collected their dishes and made his way to the kitchen, where he voluntarily assumed the task of cleaning. Cloud considered just letting him handle it all, and Sephiroth probably would have been happy to… but he got up and helped out, if only to drown out his doubts.

Once the kitchen was clean and the tree had officially become a fragrant, blinking part of the room, and after they'd watched a number of cheesy Christmas Eve specials, Cloud got up to use the bathroom.

When he came back out, there were a dozen or so perfectly wrapped presents under the tree, placed almost… artistically. Visible even from a distance was Sephiroth's chicken scratch hand writing on the tags.

Cloud stared at them for a moment, and then looked at Sephiroth, who was in the exact same place he had been in when Cloud had left, except for the curved end of a candy cane sticking out of his mouth. It was then that he suddenly remembered his made up rule, and was almost grief stricken with both adoration for the man that he loved, and regret for letting himself fall into yet another trap of self doubt.

Sephiroth sucked loudly on his candy cane, then looked up at Cloud. "What?"

What Cloud then did to Sephiroth might have been classified as an oral attack.

Small, warm lips that were far too busy to talk placed rough kisses across Sephiroth's mouth and right on down his abdomen.

And if it had been suggested to Sephiroth one year ago, that next Christmas Eve would find him sprawled on his own couch, his shirt shoved up to his chin, his pants around his ankles, and a young man's spiky, blonde head in his lap – he might have killed the suggestor on the spot.

But it was so. And that particular young man had appeared from thin air and had managed to embody everything Sephiroth never knew he wanted.

That's the perfect kind of gift to receive. Exactly what you want, and nobody at all to thank.

Sephiroth refused to think this in plain English, because it was just far too fucking cheesy for him. People weren't gifts! People in general were worth more than that, and Cloud was worth much, much more than that. The feelings Sephiroth had for him weren't to be belittled into ridiculous, meaningless clichés; fate, soul mates, or even love for that matter.

And to be so arrogant as to think of Cloud as a gift? For him? That simply was old, creepy pervert talk… however…

Sephiroth couldn't help but think that think a blue bow would look amazing nestled in those bouncing spikes.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The man liked to sleep in on days when he could. Sleep, eat, sleep, eat. Watch T.V. Then eat. Then sleep some more. Cloud had promised plenty of eating on this holiday, and Sephiroth had wrongly assumed that sleep went hand in hand with that.

He was already pulled into the living room before he had even fully opened his eyes. It was the ass crack of dawn, and Cloud was bouncing on the floor and already sliding presents his way.

"Open that!" Cloud bellowed.

Sephiroth did, with very little preamble. It was a leather strap. That woke him right the fuck up, before he realized it was only a tie. Still cool, though.

"Thanks baby," he mumbled, wiping his eyes.

Cloud then shyly stretched his neck out towards his own gifts. "Which one should I open first?"

"Definitely that one," Sephiroth pointed, before letting out a ferocious yawn.

"Aww," Cloud cooed when he picked it up. Instead of writing Cloud's name on the gift tags, he'd simply drawn a squiggly little picture of a cloud.

Cloud took a moment to appreciate the wrap job that was obviously done by hand and not a gift wrapping service; slightly crooked tape, a thick white ribbon and colorful, almost goofy penguin print wrapping paper.

Cloud slowly pulled the tab of the ribbon with two fingers, and it was strangely erotic, almost as if he was tugging down Sephiroth's zipper. He peeked up at Sephiroth who was watching with a sexy, sleepy smile and a slight case of bed head, and Cloud's morning erection made its presence known with a hard twitch. He shook his head a little and refocused on the lovely gift.

He measured its weight with his hand first. Deceptively light.

It could have been fucking anything.

After slowly unraveling the ribbon and the heart warming penguin patterned paper, a plain white box was revealed. Cloud tried to slid off the top, but was thwarted by strip of clear tape blocking an easy entry. So, he used his blunt nails to scrape at the stupid tape, every scratch harder than the last, his heart getting into the action by pounding out a little bit of impatience.

"Is every present gonna be like this?" Sephiroth complained, slightly bored and immune to the tension surrounding Cloud like an electric storm.

"Shh!" Cloud hissed, and when the tape was cleared away and the top was thrown aside, he relished in the parting of the bright blue tissue paper inside.

It was a cell phone. It looked exactly like Sephiroth's, although it was white instead of the masculine steel and black that his was.

Cloud flipped it open. Pink buttons!

"I fucking love you…" he uttered, holding it to his chest for a moment and fighting a sudden and furious onslaught of tears.

"Don't worry about service, I put you on my plan," Sephiroth grinned, and crossed his ankles on the floor. "But if you download a bunch of bullshit and run up my bill, I'm gonna come lookin' for ya."

"I won't!" Cloud swore, and looked back into the box. He found the charger, and a little instruction booklet. Not only had Sephiroth chosen a wonderful gift, he had masked it in a plain box to wring every second of gift-opening anticipation from Cloud. "...I so fucking love you!"

"Mm…" Sephiroth nodded. "I just thought it'd be good for you to have. You won't have to fight for the stupid dorm phone… and if there's ever an emergency, you can get a hold of me, I can get a hold of you. Ya know."

Cloud nodded absently, consumed with his new gadget.

Sephiroth's eyes widened considerably. "Oh, hey! Don't turn it on yet…!"

Cloud wasn't ignorant to technology, and had already pressed the power button. It was already fully charged, and Cloud smiled as Sephiroth's warning then made sense as it booted up, and a special message that he must have programmed himself scrolled across the screen : 'Merry Christmas, Baby!!!!!'

Cloud didn't have time to properly adore the little message, because he hadn't yet noticed that there was a camera involved with this phone. What he did notice was the picture for the screentop as the phone finished booting up.

Cloud's eyes almost bugged out of his head.

Sephiroth, in his bathroom mirror, wearing a wide, horny grin that was barely suppressing laughter. And... that was all he was wearing.

Cloud screamed with a throaty shrill of embarrassment and lust, his eyes hardly able to tear away from Sephiroth's washboard abs and that swollen, rock hard hunk of meat jutting from his hips.

When Cloud could finally look away, the real Sephiroth turned his nose up. "You were s'posed to see it later. When I'm not sittin' right fuckin' here."

Cloud carefully cast his new, priceless possession aside and crawled over to him. Cloud said nothing, but communicated much with his smile, and pressed it all over his lover's faintly blushing face.

Sephiroth very much liked his racy leather ensemble with the blue undershirt. He liked the Superman undies even more, and stripped himself of his sleep pants and put them on immediately.

He opened a present from Zack, which turned out to be a gag gift card for a tanning salon. Sephiroth offered it to Cloud, who noticed that the salon also advertised facials. Sephiroth decided to keep it, afterall. He had a gift from both Angeal and Genesis, which Cloud watched him open with wary, jealous eyes, and was relieved when it was only a fruit juicer.

Sephiroth regarded it with a warm, secretive chuckle. Cloud had tilted his head in wonder.

"Scurvy," Sephiroth explained. "We all almost got it. A few times, actually."

"What are you, pirates?" Cloud laughed.

Sephiroth actually considered that. "Sort of."

Rhonda and Julie had given Sephiroth a gift card for an interior design supply warehouse.

"Ohh!" Cloud commented merrily. "I can't wait to see you in your fag element!"

He received a smack on top of his head with said gift card.

Then there was a gift for the two of them from a one Mr. Rufus Shin-Ra. Cloud bounced in excitement next to Sephiroth, as it was surely something fabulous and exclusive and amazing! He let Cloud open it, and of all things, it was a pair of tickets for the Midgar Opera.

"…Is there a receipt?" Cloud wondered before he could stop himself.

"We'll regift it," Sephiroth decided.

"Zack and Aerith?" Cloud suggested.

Sephiroth thought back to the stupid tanning salon gift card. "Definitely…"

As for Cloud, Sephiroth had given him exactly what he wanted: clothes. Of course he wanted clothes! He was ever so grateful that his lover could read between the lines of his bullshit warning. It wasn't exactly a test, Cloud just wanted to see what else his lover could have come up with besides the obvious. But when the obvious was expensive, designer, and trashy, who could complain?

Sephiroth had given Cloud a pair of gray, amazing destroyed jeans in just the right size of 'pornographically small'. He'd also given him a package of knee high socks in various colors, a few cute t-shirts, and the very last package contained a black scarf that was about seven feet long.

When Cloud unraveled it, he realized that when unfolded, a perfect, life-size photo of Masamune was printed on both sides of the warm, soft material. Cloud wrapped it around his neck four times and was still surrounded by several feet.

Cloud's gift from Cam was a personal planning book. Cloud laughed a little, because Cam often had to remind him of papers and homework assignments, even though they didn't even share any classes. He opened up the planner to check it out, and out fell a train rail pass good for unlimited trips for the next three months. Cloud cried a little at the thoughtfulness, then cried a little more when he realized how much use he would be able to get out of it since Sephiroth would be gone. Cam was the best friend anyone could ask for.

His mother had sent an envelope, which contained a subscription for Fuck this Corporate Bullshit magazine, a letter full of love, and a smaller card within for Sephiroth.

Sephiroth opened it warily, probably assuming the thing would explode in his hands or infect him with anthrax, but was delighted to find a friendly letter telling him that every day he didn't break Cloud's heart found him further and further from being eaten alive. But also, a photograph of Cloud as a toddler, smiling the same exact smile that Sephiroth had grown to adore. When he turned it over, he read in delicate, feminine handwriting, Cloud, 3rd birthday.

There was an expected swell of hormonal embarrassment from Cloud, but it was short lived. Sephiroth kissed him into submission, and closed the picture into his card territorially.

The gift portion was then complete, and it was followed by a wave of contented drowsiness. Cloud smiled sleepily and laid his head down on Sephiroth's lap, bundled in his scarf.

"Here. One more." Sephiroth then reached underneath a pile of strewn wrapping paper and produced a very small, plain blue wrapped box. Cloud took it, and Sephiroth stood up with a stretch and scratched his chest. "You want some coffee?"

"Sounds good," Cloud nodded, and proceeded to open it as Sephiroth disappeared into the kitchen.

He could hear the rumble of the coffee maker while he read a note that Sephiroth had scrawled on the small, white box.

Yours if you want them. If not, just leave them. I won't be upset.

Cloud curiously opened the lid and found a set of dog tags.

For several moments that eventually ellipsed into minutes, the only sound in the apartment was the bubbling of the coffee maker.

Cloud finally touched them. Cold, metal, ordinary. He picked one up to read it, and the slight jingle of the chain momentarily added to the coffee pot's thick noise.

5141412\. Sergeant Sephiroth. Second Class SOLDIER. AB Negative. No religious affiliation.

The other tag was stamped with the Shin-Ra Army logo as it had been five years ago. They'd sharpened it up a little since then, it was now thinner and more streamlined. Then, it was simple, bold, and fitting for the army when the war in Wutai was new.

These were old tags, with an old title, with the old logo. Sephiroth was a Sergeant on his first tour of duty, when he was 17 years old. He had been wearing them when the MSO girl stole his first kiss. He had been wearing them when he ran through the jungle as fast as he could, and subsequently took out a medical tent and coined the greatest battle cry in Shin-Ra history.

These were better than his newer ones, which certainly would have said General Sephiroth and were probably shiny and pristine with the newer, sleeker logo. If he even had new ones. If he did, it was just a formality, there wasn't a soul in this army or any other who didn't know who Sephiroth was.

Cloud didn't have a set of his own tags, yet. But he knew there was a massive significance in the giving away of one's own. They might mean, 'Wait for me'. Or perhaps if the owner had departed, 'I'm always with you'.

What did these particular tags mean?

Cloud knew, and he didn't want to think, or move, or speak, or cry, or even breathe. He only wanted to hold onto what he was feeling.

No matter how they fought with each other, or disagreed, or cheated on each other, or abused each other, or any other horrors the future between them might hold, Cloud wanted to always remember this very moment… and how it felt to finally know for sure, with not a single dark doubt in his mind, that he was loved.

Cloud was wearing the tags when he went into the kitchen to find Sephiroth.

He was found leaning against the stove in his Superman boxer briefs, gazing at the coffee maker. His eyes turned to Cloud, but other than that, he did not move.

Cloud made a fist around the tags, opened his mouth, but words wouldn't come.

Sephiroth didn't know what to say either, so he went for the mundane. "They look good on you. Really good."

"…Glad you think so," Cloud finally said, his voice surprisingly calm. "Because I'm never taking them off."

Sephiroth pushed himself off the stove and crossed the room to him. Cloud sank to the floor and dragged Sephiroth down with him.

Chapter Image!! – owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-Ch18-107255699

A/N

1- I couldn't squeeze New Years into this chapter. Next time, next time.

2- I don't believe in that blood type/personality trait nonsense, it's whack. That's not why I chose what type I chose for Sephiroth. I did it because I felt like it. EDIT : I don't care to hear anything else about blood, it wasn't a big pivotal plot point, just a thought. Thanks for the blood info, though, I guess.


	19. No More Tears

"Strife residence," An unfamiliar, non-Nibelheim male voice answered over the background noise of what was a loud, drunken holiday gathering at his mother's house.

Cloud scowled. He hated talking to his mother's boyfriends.

She began dating when Cloud got older, and tended to be attracted to hooligans. They weren't Cloud's type, but were all fairly hot, which was awkward for Cloud in and of itself. But then, every single one of them had declared that Cloud had the perfect soccer physique, and would thus interrogate him as to why he was depriving the game of his Christ-given talents.

…Because he was a faggot who got endlessly teased, that's why. His shins couldn't handle the abuse.

But his canned excuse was that he "didn't feel he was good enough", which sounded to them like a request to go "kick the fucking ball around". The last thing he wanted to do was bond with them; they weren't his father. And for another thing, they were doing things to his mother. He was mature enough not to begrudge her that happiness, but it was all entirely too uncomfortable to fathom, so he kept his contact with them to a bare minimum.

The relationships never lasted too long anyways, maybe one or two dinners where he'd be forced to wear a tie and wet his hair down, a few weeks of "dates" consisting of his mother disappearing for an evening a week while he got the chance to blare his music. Then it would end with a screaming phone call, followed by a great burning of all mementos of Thomas or Johan or Anders or whoever.

"When you fall in love, Cloud…" His mother had said once while they watched the flaming wreckage of her latest relationship smolder in the backyard. "Hold onto that and don't let go. Fight for it."

"Aye…" Cloud had acknowledged, embarrassed that she'd said such a grown up thing to him. But he couldn't help thinking about the undeniable, soul shaking feelings he'd so suddenly developed for the mysterious, young, sharply handsome General Sephiroth. After only a few brief glimpses of him, he felt a skin tingling urge to somehow get closer.

"Mom?" He'd said after she'd bitterly smoked a cigarette. "Can you fall in love after only seeing someone?"

"Absolutely," She'd then thought on it for a moment. "It's different for everyone."

"You've been in love?" He'd ventured.

"Sure."

"How is it supposed to feel?" Cloud asked softly, his face burning at the topic of conversation, but he found his mouth moving on its own. "Whenever I… like someone… it hurts. Isn't love supposed to make you feel happy?"

She'd laughed at that. "The last thing love makes you, is goddamned happy. It makes you sick, it makes you depressed, it makes you overeat, and it makes you worry that you're going to lose what you've got. Love hurts like hell, and turns you into a raving bitch."

Cloud frowned down at the curling, blackened movie tickets and snapshots. "So what the hell are the happy love songs all about?"

"If you can show someone else all that ugliness, and they still love you? You've got it made. Then you can relax and enjoy. That's what the hell all those happy love songs about."

"Were you in love with Anders?" Cloud asked, thinking his mother's bitchiness hadn't waxed or waned as of late, but maintained a steady simmer.

"Nah. These are just flings, nothing. You're the only man I love…" She'd smiled and plucked at Cloud's nose, who batted her away and rubbed it with a scowly pout. She lit another cigarette. "You'll be the first to know when the real thing comes along, if it ever does again."

And as far as Cloud was concerned, it never would, because the brainless soccer jocks just weren't cutting the mustard. None of the men she'd ever brought home were good enough for her. Not one.

And whoever this current one was probably wasn't, either.

"This is Cloud, is my mom there?" He asked the stranger, keeping it cordial although half of him wanted to shout 'get the hell out of my mother!'

"…Hi, Cloud," The current heat of his mother's loins said, far too genuinely. "It's dad."

Cloud shrugged. Usually the guys weren't so quick to try and suggest that he refer to them as his father, but he was an adult now, too old to throw a fit about it and, frankly, too comfortable to care about much of anything.

He was lying in bed beside Sephiroth, who was naked as a jay bird and stretched out, thumbing through a Shin-Ra corporate magazine while wearing those thick-framed glasses. It was a fierce distraction from negative thinking. "Sure. Dad. Is April around?"

The next voice he heard was his mother's. "Happy Christmas, little angel! You don't want to talk to your dad?"

Cloud blinked. As it dawned on him, his toes splayed out in horror. "What the hell is he doing there?"

His mother laughed, and he could hear the voices of the rest of his family chattering in the background, and every so often the softly spoken male voice of his father. "Relax. He was in town tonight, so he popped by to say hello."

Cloud erupted. "How many fucking holidays went by with nothing, and he decides to pop by to say hello when I'm not there!?"

April shushed him. "Cloud, he came by hoping you might have come home. Why don't you talk to him?"

"I don't wanna!" Cloud declared petulantly. Sephiroth shifted on the bed beside him, and glanced at him from over his magazine, causing him to soften a bit. "I mean… I don't wanna talk to him on the phone. I'd rather see him in person."

"I get it. You don't have to. How did your meal turn out?"

Cloud nodded; his voice was quiet and still shaking off the shock. "Pretty good, no disasters. Oh – I burnt the sweet potatoes but he ate almost all of it anyways. Then again, he's like a goddamn garbage disposal; I think he'd eat anything."

Sephiroth huffed a little bit and turned the page.

His mother chirped happily. "I'm glad it was a success, although you could have tried cooking for me once in a fucking while. Ah - I like the clothes you sent! You're a sweetheart!"

"I thought you might! I tried the skirt on to make sure it would fit you," Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow at this comment. Cloud ignored him. "It did fit, didn't it?"

"…Of course it fit."

"…I was just making sure – "

"What are you trying to say? You think my ass got fatter since you left? You think I'm letting myself go? You think I'm eating my heart out without you around to wait on hand and foot?"

"No, no way!" Cloud then wisely manufactured a white lie. "The reason I asked was because it was a little tight on me."

"…Really? It actually fit me perfectly…"

"I could hardly breathe with it on. I thought I might be getting bigger, but the rest of my clothes still fit …so you probably slimmed down a bit?"

His mother lit a cigarette and made a happy sound. "Tell your husband I said Happy Christmas!"

Sephiroth chuckled softly, having heard loud and clear.

Cloud covered his eyes and hissed. "Momma, don't say it so loud! I don't want all of them to know!"

"Know what? That you're gay? Or that you're dating General Sephiroth?"

"Moo-oom!" He'd just been outed to the entire family – including his estranged father – by his own mother!

She gave a loud, slightly intoxicated laugh and began telling one of his aunts that Cloud had considered his sexual orientation a secret. That aunt turned out to be Judy, and her voice was on the line. "Cloud, it's your favorite auntie. Darling little sweetie cakes, don't worry. Your big, gay secret is safe with us!"

Next to take the phone was his rowdy Aunt Geraldine, who was merely ten years older than he was. "Cloud! I'm sort of upset, because your boyfriend is way hotter than any of mine. How big is his dick?" His mother balked in the background, but Geraldine went on to ask, "Just give me a number, in inches. That's all I need to know!"

Sephiroth smiled in vain satisfaction while he continued pretending to read his magazine.

Cloud raised his chin up. "We're in love! I'm not telling you shit!"

"You little fucker! C'mon! Tell me something! You're dating someone famous, don't you want to brag a bit?"

Cloud peeked at Sephiroth's groin. As if it knew it was being spoken about, it was halfway filled out and resting on Sephiroth's thigh. Cloud shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know for sure…nine, maybe?"

"Nine!?" Geraldine panicked, followed by a loud scream from somebody who might have been his mother. "Where do you put all of it, you skinny little bastard?"

"I'm not telling you anything more, pervert! Give the phone back to my mom!" Cloud yelled, while Sephiroth stopped pretending to read and rolled over onto his side to listen, highly amused.

"Come back home soon, and bring that man with you!" Geraldine demanded. "I'm taking him from you!"

"I'd love to see your sloppy, beat up twat do half of what mine can do, you used up old whore!" Cloud shouted egotistically.

Unfortunately, it was his mother he'd said that to. "Cloud Strife!"

Cloud bit down on his lip. "She started it! I don't want to talk to anyone else, don't pass me around! I have something to tell you!"

There was a pause and it was apparently his mother murdering a beer. She belched. "What?"

Cloud declared joyously. "Save this phone number, because it's my new cell!"

"Aww, that's wonderful!" She cooed. "Did your husband give it to you?"

"Yup! And he gave me some clothes, and something else. I'll tell you about it later, though..."

Sephiroth buried his face in Cloud's neck to kiss along the line of the dog tag chain and chew at his jawline. Cloud giggled and kissed his glasses, purposely leaving behind a smear on the lens. Sephiroth took them off with distaste to wipe them off on the blanket.

April wasn't nearly too drunk to know the quiet sounds of two people in love, and said privately to him, "You sound incredibly happy, Cloud. I love you."

"Love you too," he smiled. "I'm gonna call you tomorrow, and talk to you for real. You're drunk, and it's too noisy there."

April couldn't argue. "Wanna say goodbye to your father?"

"…Just tell him for me." Cloud decided after a moment's thought. "Talk to you tomorrow."

"Bye, love." She said.

He closed his phone and rolled into Sephiroth, giving him all the kisses that he had neglected to give him during the ten-minute phone conversation.

"Why didn't you want to talk to your dad?" Sephiroth asked quietly, when their passion had ebbed for the moment.

Cloud didn't want to answer the question, because he didn't know how. Instead, he peered at the clock. He was feeling frisky and playful, and besides… Christmas was certainly done for the year…

"Hey, Seph… I've still got something for you."

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows in question.

Cloud rolled out of bed, thoroughly naked. He coyly put his hands over his ass as he tittered out of the room, and returned with two more wrapped gifts.

"Why didn't you gimme those earlier?" Sephiroth wondered as Cloud hopped back into bed and presented them.

"You'll see. Open this one first…"

Sephiroth suspiciously slid his glasses off and set them on the nightstand. He then quickly opened the gift, his brow crinkling at what he found. "Night of the Living Cock…?"

Cloud nodded and bounced on the bed. "Yeah! I read the back, and it's all survivor on zombie action! The zombies aren't really dead, only sex crazed and rabid, and they spread the infection by come shots!"

"Why are you givin' me porn?"

Cloud gulped, then feigned indifference and shrugged a shoulder. "I thought we could watch together. And if you're into it, I could… you know? …Chew on you."

The look on Sephiroth's face remained completely blank, and for a moment, Cloud thought he'd made a serious error. But then his lover's neon eyes narrowed into something dark and feline. "Hot."

Cloud melted with relieved delight. "I thought you might think so, but it's really not the main thing…" He bit the edge of the wrapped gift he still hadn't handed over, yet. "This one is."

Sephiroth looked at it wearily. "…What the hell is that?"

"You'll have to find out!"

Sephiroth unpeeled the wrapping paper carefully and reluctantly. When the cover of the DVD was finally revealed, he stared at it for a long while.

Cloud's palms became slick when the silence spun out well beyond mere surprise. "Um. I was out shopping and I looked into a store window and there it was…"

Finally, Sephiroth looked up at Cloud with an unidentifiable expression, some sort of innocent mix of awe and disgust. He threw the covers aside and leapt out of bed. Leapt!

Cloud made an embarrassingly loud squeak, honestly anticipating some sort of domestic abuse. Instead, his lover was gnawing on the plastic of the sealed DVD and throwing open his armoire.

Inside was a television, and Sephiroth was hurriedly turning everything on. He got the DVD out and pressed it into the tray, took the remote, and jumped back into bed. Cloud bounced a little as the mattress violently shifted, smiling although he was still slightly terrified for his own personal safety.

The DVD menu appeared. It was an option of scene selections or to play the entire film, with a dramatic, serious pose from the Sephiroth impersonator and his genitalia. There was even background music made of techno, marching boots and grunting.

"This is fucked up."

Cloud burrowed underneath the covers. "I wasn't sure if you'd – "

"Sh!" Sephiroth watched raptly as a low level graphic scrolled slowly across the screen.

Funded entirely and presented proudly by The Silver Elite … Military Men…

The first scene began abruptly, and there Sephiroth's actor was, busily doing paperwork at a cheap, Spartan desk. Page after obviously blank page received his flourished signature then was slapped into a "completed" work pile that was easily two feet high.

The door burst open, the camera refocused, and Zack's actor came striding in with a lazy, careless strut that reminded Cloud of a wise ass wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses indoors.

"What have I told you about coming in my office, Zed?" Commander Sitonmyface boomed in a stony, testosterone-laden baritone.

Zed hooked his thumbs into his suspenders and slowly pulled them down his perfect, body-builder arms. "If I come in your office… you come in me."

"Precisely." The Commander rose to his feet, and an oddly out of place techno song began.

Both Sephiroth and Cloud burst into laughter when Sitonmyface easily tore away his "leather" clothes, which seemed to be made of some sort of unidentifiable, thin, garbage bag-like material. Within seconds, both actors were naked, and Zed dropped to his knees to eagerly fellate the ultra-muscled Commander.

While Zed was busy sucking, Sitonmyface began to hurriedly work in lubricant, obviously not taking much time for preparation because he didn't give a fuck, and probably also because Zed was a porn star who obviously knew how to take a cock.

And take a cock, Zed did! It sank in… and in… and in. Cloud cried out and covered his eyes as though it was going to somehow pop the other actor like a balloon. When he was settled in completely, there was only a very short moment of stillness.

Maybe it was rehearsed or planned or maybe it was just sexual luck, but when Sitonmyface moved, all hell broke loose. He immediately settled into brutal rhythm while Zed seemed to be going for an academy award. They began to throw around paperwork while rocking the cheap desk so hard that Cloud was waiting for it to break and send the actors plummeting to the floor… not that it would have really mattered, nothing seemed to distract Sitonmyface, not even when Zed began yanking on his hair and popping his hips up to meet his relentless thrusts.

Both Cloud and Sephiroth's eyes glazed over slightly, and Cloud didn't notice that his mouth was slightly ajar, perhaps permanently.

"How many people in the world do you think have gotten off to this?" Sephiroth asked, breaking a several minutes-long silence.

"…Billions." Cloud answered seriously, then giggled guiltily when Sephiroth swatted his mouth gently with his knuckles.

The brief skin contact made them more aware of each other, and Sephiroth sank his fingers into Cloud's spikes and then settled on the back of his neck, idly stroking the short, soft hairs. Cloud scooted closer until the lengths of their thighs touched.

The sex scene graduated from doggy style on the desk, to Zed bouncing in Sitonmyface's lap. Sephiroth leaned down secretively. "Zack can never know about this."

"Never," Cloud agreed. "And if he ever does find out, we'll be shocked and appalled."

"And I'll sue," Sephiroth then laughed. "I should sue, anyways. They didn't even ask me to be in it."

"Would you have been?" Cloud giggled, clawing playfully at Sephiroth's thighs.

"No way," Sephiroth said, his head tilting a bit as the camera angle switched and gave an overly generous view of Sitonmyface's suspiciously dark, hairy scrotum bouncing around. "…I can't help bein' a little flattered at the dude they picked…"

Cloud shook his head with authority. "Your balls are much nicer."

The scene ended with a thick spray of semen onto Zed's face, and the next thing they saw was the Commander patrolling a line of naked soldiers in a locker room. He stopped at a redhead, and the camera panned down to reveal that the redheaded man in particular had an enormous erection.

"Do you have something to say, soldier?" The Commander demanded.

"Sir, yes sir! Permission to speak freely, sir!"

"Permission granted…" Sitonmyface purred, as he began to stroke the soldier.

"Sir, please fuck me, sir!"

"Bend it over, soldier."

Sephiroth shook his head as another techno song began and all the naked soldiers began to beat off while the Commander rimmed the redhead. "This is ridiculous."

Cloud giggled behind his hands, having pulled the cover up to his chin in excitement. "But it's sort of hypnotizing! From some angles, he really looks like you."

Sephiroth grinned slyly and hit the mute button before he rolled over on top of Cloud. "Is this how you want me to be? Should I be cold and mean… an' make you call me 'Sir' while I fuck you?"

Cloud shivered a little, unable to hide the evident excitement his body felt at such a blunt suggestion. "…Not all the time. I mean, I want you to be you… It might be kind of fun to pretend..."

Sephiroth stared down at him coolly. "Pretend?"

"…Oh," Cloud blurted, his face going hot. "…I know it isn't pretend, I just…"

"Don't trip over your words, cadet. You just what?"

Cloud's eyes went wide. It was like in Rosemary's Baby, when she realized she wasn't dreaming and actually was being raped by Satan. But instead of being drugged and impregnated by the devil, Cloud was in bed with the most dangerous, powerful, beautiful man in the entire world. His wildest dreams were coming true!

But the insanity of it was that they had already been coming true. Sephiroth had kept this facet of himself entirely separate. But if he were to truly love him, he'd love all of him.

He passively laid his wrists above his head near the headboard, and unconscious submission. "I'm sorry, Sir. I meant to say that I haven't seen that side of you. The General side."

"Do you want to?" There was gravity in the question.

Cloud shivered again. "I love you. I want to know all of you. Sir."

The person Cloud had come to know was a cockneyed, slightly strange young man with a clinically insane childhood. He was funny, off beat, monotone, an overgrown playground bully with a flawless body… but one who made love with his countless insecurities fresh and unveiled. When he was with Cloud, he seemed to always be searching for validation, and puffing out like a peacock when he got it.

But General Sephiroth, the tall, proud, serious angel on television suddenly knew how to make love to him with no nonsense and all eye contact, as passionate as ever, but also tight, controlling, demanding and, above all, confident. Everytime Cloud would begin to feel like a child, like he was too extraordinarily out of his league, there would come a kiss, a perfectly pronunciated comment, something to pull him back into the moment, and into the reality of their relationship.

It wasn't that the sex was even that different or overly rough. Perhaps a slightly harsher stroke, a tighter grip, or maybe even a slap on his thighs or ass here and there.

But what made Cloud tremble around his lover was that for the first time, he really, truly felt that he was touching the General. There were no cracks in the act, because it wasn't an act. Cloud did as he was told because he had no choice – he was only a cadet, afterall.

It was damn good.

But what made it great was the fact that his pretty General, in the few heartbeats after their mutual eruption, became the fat, cuddly bear he always was after sex. One who never hesitated to bestow the sweetest of kisses, one who seemed to want to stroke and pet every part of Cloud's skin, and one who smiled when he was told that he was loved.

That was the best of both worlds.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Every other fag in Midgar is dancing right now, at this very moment, except for us!" Cloud lamented.

"So go dance."

"I can't..." Cloud pouted into his cell phone. "Not without you."

"Ya don't need me to go everywhere with you."

"But I want you, Seph. You're just right down the street..." Cloud whined. "And it's still early! You could come get me and then we could go down to – "

"Fuckin' goddamn, Cloud. Why can'tcha ever take 'no' for an answer?"

Cloud's chin hit his chest. It was New Year's Eve, a veritable celebration of tight pants and music and boys and alcoholic beverages and ohhh... just about everything Cloud loved in life. It was a holiday for gays to balance out the holiness of Christmas in the month of December. Skylar and the rest of the academy 'mo's went down to Dix In Vixen, the most popular gay club in the city, demanding that he come along.

But Cloud didn't feel right at all going there without his boyfriend.

For one thing, the only deflection to allow him to dance his tush off without gross, unwanted, old man advances was a 6 foot 4 wall of hot muscle. And for another thing, it was a room full of horny guys – and there was only one thing gay guys liked doing more than dancing and dressing well. Cloud didn't want any sort of weird guilt hanging over his head for looking too long at an overzealous public display of affection. He needed Sephiroth there to point and laugh with, or maybe even wiggle eyebrows with.

And besides, maybe... possibly... he had the urge to make some public displays of his own. Also... dancing! With Sephiroth? His idol, his hero, his lover? Something about that was even sexier than sex!

New Year's Eve just wouldn't be any fun without his beloved, bottom line. Cloud wanted to kiss him at midnight, to dance with him, to get tipsy and be carried home by him, make some slightly intoxicated love to him and then skip school the next day from a massive hangover.

It was a queer's Christmas, and he wouldn't take no for an answer.

Cloud tried to appeal to Sephiroth's youth: "But you're 22! This is the prime of your life, your first real year living as a gay man! This new year is important, and should be celebrated as such!"

"Bullshit," Sephiroth bluntly declared.

Cloud tried to appeal to his sense of chivalry: "What if I get hit on?"

"I trust you to tell them to fuck off," Sephiroth answered reasonably. "And four solid months of training? You're plenty able to take care of yourself."

"What if they're bigger than me? What if there are more than one of them? What if they drug me and take me to some warehouse and tie me up and do unspeakable things to me?"

"I'll show up out of nowhere to save you just in the nick of fuckin' time."

Cloud even promised sexual gratification: "But I need to see you tonight anyways, Sephy... but please don't ask why..."

Sephiroth sighed and took the bait. "…Why?"

"Oh, you know..." Cloud murmured coyly. "I want to... mmm… tee hee! I'm too shy to say it out loud!"

"You are not."

"Fine! I wanna dance, get drunk, get horny and get fucked! I can't do any of that without you! Pleeease! It'll be so much fun and we're missssing iiit!"

"You want me to come just to buy your booze!" Sephiroth accused.

"No, Seph!" Cloud cried indignantly.

"I'll get you some beer an' fuck you if that's what you really want, but I'm not goin' to a stupid club," Sephiroth said point blank.

"Why?"

"I don't feel the need to."

"Why!?"

"Because it sounds unappealing."

"Whhhyyy?!"

Then, something different happened. No clipped denials, no growling, no deep sighing.

Silence. Cloud's jaw dropped, and he slowly moved his cell phone from his ear and looked at it.

Sephiroth hung up on him!

"That son of a bitch..." Cloud muttered, then redialed the number, and prepared to let the fur fly.

Sephiroth answered the phone with resonating, infectious laughter.

Cloud giggled before he could help himself. "That wasn't funny!"

"Baby, will it make you happy to go dancing tonight?"

"Yes!"

"Good thing I don't give a shit about your happiness," Sephiroth said, and Cloud could almost see him throwing back his head as he laughed.

"SEEEPHIROOTH!"

"Alright, can you give me one good reason; one good, solid reason why I would wanna haul my ass down under the plate on a fuckin' Tuesday night? Why I would seek out and stand around in a stupid gay club that I've never wanted to step foot in before? Just one good reason why I would want to even be in a room full of busted fags, watchin' while they grind on each other, and pushin' em off when they try to grind on you? Tell me baby, why I would do that to myself tonight?"

"It's our two month anniversary."

A length of silence was ended by Sephiroth's accusatory snort. "Wait a minute… not until tomorrow, we were official on the first, remember?"

Cloud toyed with his shoelaces. "Nope, the 31st. I was yours on Halloween, remember?"

"We gonna argue about this every goddamn month?"

"Only when it's convenient!"

"Lemme put somethin' on. I'll give you a call when I'm outside."

"Wear something sexy for me!" Cloud chirped.

"Yeah? You too," he grumbled.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud made good on that suggestion, as Sephiroth could tell as he watched him climb up into the tank. In fact, his first thought was to send Cloud back to his dorm to change his fucking clothes.

He had on the pants Sephiroth had given him for Christmas, which basically put his asscrack on permanent display, and a little black t-shirt that didn't even attempt to reach the top of his pants.

And it wasn't even about what he was wearing, as what was going on underneath his clothes. About two inches of Cloud's lower stomach was showing, and it was a smoldering two inches, indeed. Even sitting, Cloud's stomach was now flat and edged, his arms long and gaining shape. But his eyes were as large and innocent as ever, the most gentle water blue Sephiroth had ever seen. His lips were small and soft, and always inviting. His skin was perfect, his hair was that eye catching blonde helmet of soft spikes, hypnotizing as they swayed the feathers with the force of the heater vent.

Cloud frowned slightly when Sephiroth said nothing to him, but was obviously scrutinizing him. "…Do I look okay?"

Sephiroth sighed with the decision that he would not be that boyfriend. Not a jealous bastard who wanted to cover up the beauty that he had been attracted to himself. And finally, he said with a smile, "Very, very sexy."

Cloud flushed and grinned, his legs squeezing together momentarily in glee.

Sephiroth then pursed his lips. "…Don't you think you might need a jacket… or somethin'?"

"I figured I didn't need one," Cloud shrugged, buckling his belt. "I'll be on you all night; you're like a furnace."

Sephiroth gave Cloud a kiss. That was the first and last time he ever questioned Cloud's attire.

"Guess what?" Cloud asked after fiddling with the radio. "After tonight, no need to pick me up incognito. I have some friends who're gonna be at the club and I'm sure everyone at school will know about us within the hour."

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't care anymore," Cloud waved his hand. "I shouldn't have lied in the first place. It was stupid."

Sephiroth smiled. "So you're finally cool with gettin' teased about us?"

"Teased? Teased? They won't be teasing me, they'll all be begging to hear the particulars! Which I will not divulge!…" Cloud promised, although he already had, in rather explicit detail under the pseudo boyfriend name. It's not like it was anything embarrassing or damaging – a big cock and delicious sexual prowess wasn't something that was particularly surprising about Sephiroth.

"Well, why didja wanna hide it at all, then?" Sephiroth asked, digging around in his arm rest until he found a package of gum.

Cloud shrugged a shoulder, and lied. "I don't know, really."

The truth was, Cloud hadn't wanted to tell the school because he was afraid the relationship was going to end quickly and abruptly, and then he'd carry the shameful stigma of being Sephiroth's cast off for the rest of his military career.

But after all they had been through together, after all the love they had both proved to one another… Cloud knew that Sephiroth was, at the very least, the greatest love he'd ever know. He knew it was love, real love. Not one-sided affair, not puppy love, not a desperate, clinging condition of the mind.

They were in love with each other. And while it might not last forever (even with the heartfelt gift of Sephiroth's dog tags and the subsequent smoldering encounter on the kitchen floor, Cloud's inner darkness of course kept a timer on true love and happiness)… he'd surely never burn so hotly for anyone else. He couldn't even fathom wanting anyone else. And he wanted everyone else to know, too.

Sephiroth heard the lie and didn't like it, but didn't press the issue. He couldn't have cared less what the schoolboys at the academy thought about Cloud, him, or anything for that matter. If they were naïve enough to be bigoted against homosexuals, they needed to take a closer examination of the army they were currently enrolled in.

Shin-Ra always had been and always would be open minded about everything; that was what being cutting edge was all about. And of course, old man Shin-Ra's stranglehold on the press kept everyone's personal lives permanently off of the newspaper covers, thus granting his freedom to do as he wished with Cloud in public, whether he wanted to eat a hotdog with him on the sidewalk, or fuck him ragged while waiting in line at the post office.

The lower level army grunts and the school kids were the only ones who liked to nitpick and be catty, but once they ascended into the upper ranks, the level of personal camaraderie left no room for prejudices. Giving personal attention to each individual was one of the reasons why being a General for Shin-Ra was so taxing and time consuming, but it was worth it for occasions like Halloween, when the group could gather together as family. Sephiroth was by no means responsible for this, it was just the Shin-Ra way: keep everyone as happy as possible, because they were in it for fucking life.

But he'd found a great deal of pleasure in his work because of this, even blossoming into a semi-reluctant life of the party. Who would have thunk it? The little albino lab rat had grown to become a semi-social butterfly. And anyone who knew him at all was happy he'd finally found a romantic relationship that worked. And if they didn't like it, they would learn to fucking live with it.

Thinking about all of this impassioned Sephiroth to grab the back of Cloud's head and reel him in for a kiss. Cloud made an inquisitive noise against his mouth, to which Sephiroth gave him a swipe of his tongue and a smile.

Then he realized he'd lost his gum. Cloud was chewing it without even raising an eyebrow, which he found slightly repulsive, then sort of cute. He dug around in his armrest for more.

They left the tank at Sephiroth's parking garage, and took the train downtown. This was handy because Sephiroth didn't like driving under the plate, and also because Cloud was hell bent on getting Sephiroth intoxicated.

The place was packed, with a line of neon-clad gentleman twining around an entire block. Cloud moaned a little, but began to steer himself towards the end of it, but Sephiroth took his hand, and pulled him towards the very front.

Sephiroth didn't even ask, or say anything at all. He simply strutted up to the next man who was fifth in line, clapped him jovially on the back, and then cut him. Cut! Just like that!

Cloud felt a burning need to apologize for Sephiroth's diva behavior, and peeked over his shoulder at the victim. The man was well built and standing halfway at attention in his mesh top. Cloud didn't recognize him, but apparently Sephiroth had, for he turned and began to talk shop with him. They shared a chuckle that only came from delicious, catty gossip, and then Sephiroth hugged Cloud to his side and moved them through the door.

The door guy didn't ask for Sephiroth's ID, he simply wrapped a bright pink wristband on him that signified that he was of a drinking age. He looked sideways at Cloud, but didn't ask for an ID from him either, and reluctantly gave him an armband as well.

Cloud took a moment to marvel at it with wide eyes, forgetting all aspects of coolness. Sephiroth cupped the back of his neck and pulled him out of the doorway while he continued to turn his wrist this way and that.

Once inside, Sephiroth crossed his arms and took in the place. Thumpa thumpa music, scantily clad men, a handful of well-dressed girls who were probably men as well, and flashing lights. It was exactly what he had imagined the place to be. He checked his phone, and saw that he had at least three hours to suffer through until Cloud would be satisfied in celebration of the New Year.

He looked down to find Cloud enchanted and entranced by all that he was surrounded by, spinning in little circles where he stood to take in 360 degrees of the room. He finally stopped spinning and pulled Sephiroth down to speak into his ear. "I'm thirsty!"

"Of course you are," Sephiroth said back to him, giving his nose a small kiss before leading him to the bar.

He leaned against it and made eye contact with one of the bartenders, who eventually came over to him. Sephiroth gave the floor to Cloud, who chirped out his order. "Nibelheim Lemonade. Two, please!"

The bartender went to work on the order, and Sephiroth leaned down to Cloud's ear. "You're not expectin' me to drink the second one, are ya?"

"Yes!" Cloud nodded. "You'll like it! I promise!"

When the drinks were complete, Sephiroth paid the man and stubbornly gave Cloud both.

Cloud handed one back to him. "C'mon, just try it!"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes and took a sip, while Cloud downed his entire cup. The General had a little bit of difficulty swallowing it, and immediately set the cup down. "Why tha fuck would you ever give me that?"

Cloud threw back his head with laughter. "How can you not like it!? It's sweet!"

"Nasty," Sephiroth disagreed, shaking his head while Cloud drained his unfinished cup.

"Let's try again!" Cloud suggested after wiping his mouth, begged the bartender with his eyes to return, and then made a second order. "Raspberry Kamikaze! Two!"

The next set of drinks came back, and Sephiroth blithely took a sip. "Ugh."

Cloud was highly amused. "You're such a baby! Just drink it!"

"I could puke," Sephiroth frowned, crinkling his nose in distaste as Cloud greedily consumed both cups.

Cloud's limbs were noticeably loosened as he reached over the bar and pulled on the bartenders arm. "We have a situation! This man isn't a drinker, and hates the taste of alcohol. How can I get him drunk?"

The bartender leaned on his elbows. "Maybe he's a Bloody Mary kind of guy?"

Cloud cocked his head. "Do we look like two old ladies playing Bridge to you?"

"Maybe… Midgar Iced Tea?"

Cloud shrugged. "He's already tried Nibelheim Lemonade, and that's even sweeter."

The bartender reached idly behind himself and began to rearrange the cash lining his g-string. "A lot of people who don't like mixed drinks don't like them because of the sweetness. Have you tried just giving him straight liquor?"

Cloud looked at the bartender as though he were a prophet. "Brilliant! Bring him some Captain Morgan! Ohh… and can I have a Leg Spreader? Actually, two."

Sephiroth watched this with the same exact feeling he had when two scientists had discussed his fecal content in front of him. Embarrassing, but he had to give them credit for caring so much about something so disgusting.

The bartender returned, and stayed to watch Sephiroth's reaction to the rum. Sephiroth tried to be casual as he picked his cup up, although he was a bit nervous when a few other people stopped to watch him drink as well. Cloud sipped his own little cocktail, his eyes wide and excited.

Sephiroth took a sip of it, and made the exact same serious, pouty face he made while swallowing semen. When it was done, he licked his lips.

"Well?" Cloud beamed.

"It's okay," Sephiroth nodded. He didn't exactly like it, but it didn't make his throat constrict and reject it like the other beverages had. It burned, and he sort of liked that. He took another drink, and Cloud slapped on the bar and begged for one, two, no, three more!

"No, that's all wrong," Cloud shouted loosely, and half-slapped the drink from Sephiroth's hand. "Don't sip, throw."

Cloud demonstrated, by "throwing" an 8 gil drink down in one puff cheeked swallow.

Sephiroth followed his example with the rum, involuntarily hissing as it passed down his trachea. It was sort of fun, and it was a type of male bonding that he hadn't experienced before with Cloud. And frankly, didn't think the loving little blonde had it in him. It wasn't romantic, mushy, or sexual, it was just fun, painful, and noisy as they hissed and groaned with every swallow. It made Sephiroth greatly look forward to a time when he could train Cloud… or at least fuck him without the intense self-restraint.

While they waited for another round, a little gaggle of cadets stormed Cloud, nearly causing him to spill his drink. They all began to speak in some sort of high-pitched teenage language, commenting on what each other was wearing and generally acting as though they hadn't seen each other in thousands of years.

Skylar began to search around. "So where's your SOLDIER boy?"

Cloud waved his hands until they quieted down. Then, ever so slowly, he curled his arm around Sephiroth's waist.

The cadets realized who it was that had been leaning on the bar next to Cloud, and then the significance of their close proximity. Questions passed over their faces faster than their features could keep up with.

Cloud licked his lips. "Guys, there's no Brody. This is my boyfriend, and always as been. Sephiroth."

"Hello," Sephiroth said, sick to death of them already, and more rum had shown up to give him something else to focus on.

"Sir!" They all squawked, standing a little straighter in their skinny jeans.

One with glitter covering a good portion of his skin clapped his hands. "I heard a rumor about this! I never would have thought it was Cloud! I mean… of all people, Cloud?" Then he covered his mouth. "No offense, hon."

"None taken. It's not like I deserve him, who possibly could…?" Cloud flaunted somewhat shamelessly, hugging Sephiroth close. The little gaggle of gays all drew in loud breaths when General Sephiroth not only allowed himself to be hugged, but hooked a heavy arm around Cloud in return.

"Cloud! You're so lucky!…" A dark haired one wailed, giving Sephiroth a doe eyed, gag inducing gaze.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he cleared his throat judicially. "I disagree. I'm the lucky one."

Sephiroth had just sealed Cloud's coolness for the rest of his military career. It was as if a bomb had been set off in the center of their little group. The boys flailed and screamed, and Cloud hid his face against Sephiroth's side in happy embarrassment.

"But why did you say you were dating some dude named Brody?…Why did you?…" Skylar's question died in his mouth, because there were obviously dozens of reasons one might initially hide such a thing.

And it added up anyways, as sometimes Cloud would mention long hair, and others he manufactured a spiky haired description of his lover. Other times he talked about green eyes, only to later say they were brown. Skylar had wondered if Cloud was making the boyfriend up, but the tales of their romance were a little too realistic to be totally fabricated, and almost every Monday morning had found Cloud limping very slightly on the field, a telltale side effect of sex, and the constant glow in his eyes a telltale side effect of amazing sex.

It all made sense now. Skylar blinked, and something faded a little inside of them.

That was the last of his lingering hopes to have Cloud finally put to rest. He'd been eager to meet this Brody guy, to size him up and hopefully find some sort of flaw, some sort of loophole to get rid of him and take what he'd wanted since the first day of school.

He'd listened to Cloud's sexual tales, putting himself in the role of "Brody" almost nightly while alone in his bed, or enacting Sephiroth's moves on unsuspecting sexual partners, practicing for the day when he'd have his chance to blow Cloud's mind… and everything else. He could hold him up against a shower wall, he could throw those legs over his shoulders, he could make Cloud lose control, he could do anything to Cloud that this guy could do. Skylar was certain of it, and was prepared to compete.

But not against a god.

Cloud was too happy, in love, and buzzed to notice Skylar's dark eyed glare, but Sephiroth easily recognized that for what it was as the boy's energy shifted from to surprise, to jealousy, to pure hatred. Did he feel sorry for the hopeless, lovelorn little cadet? Not a damn bit! But he wanted to treat Cloud's friends well, even if this one was currently murdering him in his mind in eight thousand different ways.

"You boys want anything?" He asked mildly, unable to keep a bemused little smile off of his face when Skylar lost his nerve and his little death glare fizzled into a bashful pout.

The others gasped, then grabbed at Cloud's wrist to examine his armband in disbelief, then began fumbling through their tight little pockets for cash. Skylar gave Cloud a fake smile, and searched for money through his own pockets.

The boys took their illegal drinks and dispersed before the General could change his mind, chattering and lisping loudly about Cloud's intensely good fortune. The one with the black hair screamed that Sephiroth was the hottest man he'd ever seen at the top of his lungs, to which Sephiroth snickered against his cup, and Cloud hugged and nuzzled him possessively.

Skylar lingered for only a few moments longer, wishing Cloud a happy New Year, and nodding to the General before finally disappearing into the crowd.

"That wasn't so bad!" Cloud chirped, sipping demurely at his drink before losing patience and throwing it back in two graceless gulps. "I thought they'd want to lynch me or something for lying to them!"

"You have vapid friends," Sephiroth chuckled colorfully, following suit with more rum.

"They aren't my friends, shit," Cloud slurred. "They wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire."

Sephiroth chuckled. "One has a big fuckin' crush on you."

"I knooow," Cloud admitted, even though his sober self never would have. "But I don't like himmm."

"Why tha hell not?" Sephiroth asked, rubbing his eyes.

"He's too much like me. And he's so girly," Cloud complained, pressing his cheek against the bar as he was suddenly curious about its temperature. "He's got like, an anal vagina."

That was the funniest thing he'd ever heard Cloud, or anyone say. Sephiroth couldn't stop the flood of laughter. As soon as it died down, Cloud giggled slightly and they both fell apart all over again.

Sephiroth smiled for no reason, and regrettably squinted at someone he thought he recognized across the bar. That someone mistook this as an invitation and began approaching.

"Oh, fuck…" He muttered, and quickly turned around in the naïve assumption that the back of him would be any less recognizable than the front of him.

"What?" Cloud wondered, and then happily exclaimed, "Ruuufus!"

"Ladies," Rufus Shin-Ra greeted fancily, despite the fact that he was wearing nothing but snow-white skinny jeans and a white Chanel scarf around his neck. Cloud hugged him happily, and Rufus shrugged him off with a flourish and turned to Sephiroth. "Well well well, another year, another queer. Never thought I'd see you here. And the belle of the ball is being quite the wallflower this evening."

Sephiroth cocked his head. "I'm not bein' a wall – "

"I was referring to myself," Rufus interjected haughtily, then turned to Cloud. "I've been waiting for a real man to come along, but they're all so ugly at this bar. You're the only decent looking guy in a thirty-foot radius. I'll do you the honor."

Cloud blushed, and then looked to Sephiroth. "Do you mind?"

Sephiroth waved them away, sad to lose his company, but somewhat grateful to get Rufus out of his face. Cloud hopped to attention and offered his arm to Rufus, who took it gracefully and followed the shorter blonde out onto the dance floor.

Sephiroth could see them easily from his vantage point at the bar, and Rufus began a ridiculous, tightly controlled sort of stepping movement, which inexplicably caught the attention of several nearby dancers. Cloud watched him dance for a moment, smiling and swaying a little to the beat before he began hopping about messily in some punk rock semblance of dancing.

Sephiroth smiled as Cloud grabbed one of Rufus' arms and flailed with it, much to Rufus' displeasure. When Cloud led a screaming Rufus right into a conga line, Sephiroth turned around and rested his chin on his hand.

"Don't look so bored," A familiar voice said near his ear. "It's a party."

Sephiroth grinned and looked at Genesis. "What the hell are you doin' here?"

"Only breathing," Genesis answered easily. "Imagine my surprise to turn and see you sitting here all alone like a black and white tragedy. Flawless, stunning, and sighing in solitude after letting your little boy leave with that asshole, Rufus."

As per usual, Sephiroth ignored the flowery, somewhat insulting statement except for the latter. "How'd you manage to slip under Rufus' radar?"

Genesis' smile deepened. "I didn't. I came here with him."

Sephiroth's eyebrows popped up with more gossipy interest than his sober self would have allowed. "You're back together?"

"Impossible," Was all he said about it. Then he touched Sephiroth's arm. "What I want to know, is what it's going to take to make my dreams come true, and lure you onto the dance floor."

Sephiroth winced slightly at the sea of flailing men.

"You're not afraid, are you?"

Cloud was happily bopping Rufus around before finally being shoved away in favor of a tall brunette with a pink and yellow polo. That was fine by Cloud because everything in the world was perfect and beautiful in that moment. He was so alive! It was as though the club were a womb and the music throbbed like a mother's heartbeat, Cloud felt like he was in his most primal element.  
There was only one thing that would have made him feel more complete, and he swung himself around to go collect him from the bar. He danced his way through the crowd, only to find a two old lesbians making out in his place.

Cloud scanned around to see where Sephiroth could have strutted off to, thankful that his lover didn't exactly have the luxury of low visibility. He just needed to look for the waterfall of shiny hair reflecting the lights like a silver mirror. When he finally spotted him, a dreadful chill jetted down Cloud's sides and back again before leaving his body with a grave walking shiver.

He never expected to see Sephiroth moving like that… at least not buried several inches inside of him. And even if he was aware that Sephiroth knew how to dance like a gogo stripper, he definitely wasn't supposed to be doing it with his hands hooked over some other man's shoulders, while the man in question's hands clutched at the throat of his black v-neck and the semi- exposed small of his back.

He couldn't deny how beautiful and arousing it could have been to just watch, but Sephiroth's eyes on another man's, his mouth smiling for another man?…

Cloud was ready to knife a bitch.

Then he realized with a sickened sigh who it was that his lover was dancing all too neighborly with. And fucking goddamit… Rufus was certainly not exaggerating. Genesis' hair was like caramel apples. His eyes were oceanic teal. Homeboy was so perfect he didn't even look like an actual human being… Genesis was obviously a pleasure-droid, and he proved so by sliding down low on the floor and smiling up at Sephiroth mischievously, inches away from the crotch of his jeans.

Cloud frantically reached into his drunken memory banks for information that had been offered up about Genesis during the telling of Sephiroth's life story. Not much had been said about even a mild flirtation. Genesis was one of Sephiroth's friends in school, and that they remained close through the years and ranks.

It's nothing, Cloud exhaled, remembering the dog tags he was wearing.

It was nothing. He'd given Sephiroth his first male kiss, and every other important subsequent homosexual first on down the line. Not Genesis, for whatever reason. They were only friends having a little drunken, suggestive fun.

Like Cam, perhaps. Cloud would have danced like that with Cam, no problem.

Cloud's hesitant confidence in this shattered when Genesis slid his hands up Sephiroth's shirt and pulled it up to his chin, and his long pink tongue came in direct contact with Sephiroth's collar bone. Sephiroth did nothing to stop the attack, only pushed his shirt down after a moment and playfully wagged his finger in Genesis' face… only to have it captured and nibbled on.

Not on Cloud fucking Strife's watch! He quickly considered many courses of action.

He could order a drink and throw it on Genesis, a modern day glove-slap to the face. But then again, he was only a cadet and this was a first class General… if he were to challenge the saucy, red headed tart to a lover's duel… Cloud would lose.

Then he considered grabbing the nearest man and snogging him right in front of Sephiroth to give him a taste of his own medicine… but he didn't want to kiss someone else. And although he was tipsy, he wasn't drunk enough not to realize the serious gravity of such a trespass.

That only left Cloud with one clear option, and that involved taking off his shirt. He tucked it into his back pocket and weathered the groping and wandering hands of strangers as he worked his way over to the Generals, and their cooled off, but still way-too-fucking friendly dance-off.

Cloud approached Sephiroth from behind, and almost hesitated.

But then again, no! He thrust his hands into Sephiroth's front pockets, grabbed two handfuls full of denim material, and jerked him away from Genesis as hard as he could.

If Sephiroth had had one or two more strong drinks in him, he would have damn well tumbled right over on top of Cloud. Instead, he barely managed his footing and threw an arm around Cloud's neck, who wrapped both arms around Sephiroth and instinctively locked his legs.

"What the fuck was that for?" Sephiroth demanded, still leaning heavily on Cloud.

Cloud righted his lover sheepishly. "I missed you."

Sephiroth stood up and his expression softened, and for a moment Cloud thought he might have overreacted… that is until a perfect, doll-like face peered down at him from around Sephiroth's shoulder.

Genesis said something that Cloud couldn't quite make out over the noise of the club, and before he could help himself, Cloud tilted his head and went, "Huh?"

He realized the stupidity in his reaction when Sephiroth smiled and ruffled Cloud's slightly damp bangs. "Don't worry about it, baby. You wanna drink?"

Cloud shook his head. "No, I wanna dance with you!"

Genesis then leaned down close to Cloud's ear. "Why don't you go hop around with Rufus?"

Cloud narrowed his eyes. "I don't wanna dance with Rufus. I wanna dance with my boyfriend."

"You made a mistake in leaving him alone. I got him out here first!"

Cloud was about to go into a whole laundry list of things he'd done to Sephiroth first, but he was cut short by a soft pair of lips touching his. Then Sephiroth said into his ear. "Whatever you do, don't worry about it."

Cloud was about to ask him what the hell that was supposed to mean, and just exactly what it was he wasn't supposed to worry about, when Sephiroth turned back around and went right back to dancing with Genesis. Instead of pouting about it, he put his hands on Sephiroth's hips, flat out refusing to be ignored.

Sephiroth gave him a smile over his shoulder, and turned a little to wrap an arm around Cloud's neck and pull him closer. Cloud wished he'd turn his back on Genesis, but then again… he didn't want Genesis anywhere near Sephiroth's ass.

So he contented himself with sharing Sephiroth, who danced with both of them like a regular pimp. It was all very well, because Cloud's presence had cooled Genesis off of wandering his hands over Sephiroth's body, at least. And then it began to be less about competition, and more about sharing the beat with Sephiroth, who kept the time perfectly.

Cloud ground his feet into the floor, jumping and swaying and using his hips to talk to Sephiroth's. Suddenly a new beat began, and all was not just well, but heavenly. It was one of Cloud's favorites, and he threw back his head to declare so.

"This is my favorite song!" Cloud roared.

Genesis leaned down teasingly. "You said the same about the last three songs, fickle one!"

Cloud bumped his head into Genesis', which he meant to come off as territorial, but ended up looking and feeling lolling and affectionate. He didn't even know the man beyond his first name and his aura of cattiness, but so close to his face, his better judgment reigned in a soul deep desire to kiss the man.

He moved from around Sephiroth and danced with Genesis. The man's hands ran over him, and he then understood what Sephiroth had been talking about. It was all for show, he felt nothing when the man touched his bare chest or even ran his hands over his hips. For all of the redhead's handsy showmanship, being touched by him felt oddly… asexual.

What did not feel asexual at all, was Sephiroth's heat at his back. He couldn't see what he was doing, but rather felt his hands caress over his shoulders and his groin bump into his ass. It wasn't lewd, but rather a moving display of sexual affection. Genesis became interested in someone else, and for the moment it was only the two of them.

Before Cloud could turn, he felt a trail of slow, sloppy kisses move up his back starting at the base of his spine. He arched a little at the unexpected affection, and looked over his shoulder in time to see Sephiroth straightening up gracefully.

"What was that for?" Cloud asked, falling back against him.

"Midnight," Sephiroth explained, kissing along his neck and onto his cheek.

Cloud raised his eyebrows and looked around the club to see almost everybody either engaged in a lip lock, or just ending one. Cloud smiled and turned his face up, and Sephiroth gladly took the invitation.

They forgot about everything. They lost themselves and dulled out any sense that didn't have to do with the taste and slide of each other's tongues.

"I'm ready to leave when you are," Cloud offered, leaning heavily.

"Already?" Sephiroth teased his lips with more tiny pecks.

Cloud had the perfect smoldering retort, but he was shoved unceremoniously out of the way, and Genesis quickly took his spot. Sephiroth looked mildly surprised, that is, until there came a dry, unimpressed voice.

Rufus yawned despite the festive atmosphere. "Sephiroth, Cloud, you're relatively new to the Midgar gay scene, so I'll just warn you now, that Genesis Rhapsodos is the loosest slut on the planet."

Genesis sneered. "Well if that isn't the pot with the big, gaping asshole calling the kettle black."

Rufus didn't seem too shocked or disgusted. "Listen, herpes, I didn't come here tonight to indulge you in drama. I came here to dance in celebration of the New Year. Sephiroth, put down your pet and your crabs-infested coworker and dance with me."

Genesis knocked Cloud out of the way. "Sephiroth is already dancing with me. Go buy yourself someone to dance with."

Rufus claimed Cloud. "No need, I'll take him."

Cloud looked up at Sephiroth, quickly sobering and wondering what the hell was happening. The neon green eyes narrowed and rolled in their sockets.

Genesis, with his hands full of Sephiroth, and Rufus, with his hands full of Cloud, both seemed to be attempting to outdo each other in slutitude, quite hypocritically considering their earlier insult slinging. Rufus became surprisingly dominant, and shoved Cloud around until he was behind him, suggestively grinding. Cloud blushed furiously, unsure of what to do, so he took advice from Lady Gaga and just danced.

Genesis busied himself with gyrating on Sephiroth's long frame as though he were a human stripper pole, and forcefully pushing his hands into the silver haired beauty's clothes. Even though it was indescribably non-sexual, Cloud still didn't like the looks of it. He wrapped his arms around Sephiroth's waist from behind in an effort to make his presence known, and discourage copulation.

With Cloud stretched out towards Sephiroth, Rufus smacked his hand between his shoulder blades, shocking him into a plainly bent over and entirely too suggestive position in front of him. Genesis narrowed his eyes and gnawed on Sephiroth's jaw line, peering at Rufus in challenge. Then, when the stakes were at their highest, Rufus then did the unthinkable.

He thrust his hands down the front of Cloud's pants.

Before Cloud could finish his embarrassed yelp, his feet had left the ground and he instinctively tossed his hands around Sephiroth's neck, who had swooped him up before he even realized he'd cried out in surprise. Apparently he had been keeping an extremely close eye on the action between the blondes.

Both Genesis and Rufus stopped dancing and looked slightly bewildered, like naughty children.

"Too far," Sephiroth said seriously, glaring at Rufus, who wilted only slightly in his designer jeans. "We don't mind being your pawns to make each other jealous, but you don't put your hands on him like that. Ever."

Cloud swooned quietly, never in his entire life the recipient of such heroic behavior. Sephiroth squeezed him, still staring at Rufus to cement his warning.

Rufus then reclaimed his superior footing. "I wouldn't have done it if this skank hadn't been egging me on."

Genesis raised an eyebrow. "I was merely dancing with a good friend. I don't pay you any attention, you little drama whoring twat."

"As if I'd want your attention!" Rufus snapped his fingers near Genesis' ear, causing him to flinch slightly. "Why did you even bother to ask me out tonight if you were just going to flirt with every shirtless wonder that floats by?"

Genesis rolled his eyes, his defenses crumbling a bit and genuine weariness slipping through. "I told you, you stupid bitch. He was the bartender! I was merely tipping him a gratuity when I put the money in his g-string!"

Rufus crossed his arms. "With your teeth?"

Cloud piped up. "The guy with the little thong and the black flippy hair? He was the bartender, Rufus! We bought drinks from him and everything… but we only handed him the tips, we didn't use our teeth."

"See!?" Rufus smiled haughtily. "Genesis is obviously a disgusting slut!"

Genesis scowled. "I didn't want to ask you here tonight, anyways. Everyone else had prior engagements, so I did you a favor by giving your dusty cell phone a call."

Rufus seemed to be genuinely pained by that comment. "I got a lot of calls for tonight, and you know it. I just didn't want to go out with those lowlifes."

"What a martyr! So saintly and superior now that you've given up coke! Too bad you were a weak willed little follower to let yourself get hooked in the first place!"

"How dare you throw it in my face! You're supposed to be my support system! But you haven't done anything but take all the credit!" Rufus then turned to leave. "And by the way, sitting through Loveless SUCKS without coke!"

After all the ammo that had been slung, Genesis looked actually stunned with insult. He lunged out and seized Rufus' arm. "How dare you!? And besides, I do support you! You're paranoid now that you're sober!"

"I'm not paranoid! I need you!" Rufus' lower lip quivered. "I need a friend."

Genesis' face darkened quickly. "Friend? I'm not your goddamn friend. I'm your man."

"My man?" Rufus asked doubtfully.

"And don't forget it."

Rufus reeled back and slapped Genesis across the face. Cloud gasped sharply and covered his mouth, but then Sephiroth chuckled knowingly.

Then, both of the men came together like hyper charged magnets. Genesis kissed passionately, and Rufus seemed slightly naked in that moment with his nose pressed into the slightly taller man's cheek. It was intense, but brief. Their lips came apart, and they began to say words that only they could hear, but not one of them sounded damaging.

Cloud thought he might have seen Rufus tell Genesis 'Happy New Year', and he would have bet his left testicle that Genesis then said, 'I love you'.

There was a cluster of men intently watching the delicious drama, and a few aww'd at the somewhat bittersweet ending, and then went back to dancing. Sephiroth smiled against Cloud's ear, "See? Don't worry."

Cloud nodded, understanding. This was obviously nothing new.

"First Zack and Aerith on Christmas Eve, and now this!" Cloud grinned, hugging Sephiroth close and slowly beginning to dance against him again. "Is there always so much drama on the holidays?"

Sephiroth's mouth became a line. "Just wait for fuckin' Valentine's day."

Genesis and Rufus began dancing together after that before disappearing completely.

Finally alone, Cloud got to enjoy Sephiroth's deliciously loose dancing style privately, doing his best to keep up. He mostly just hooked his fingers into Sephiroth's belt loops and let his feet stomp and grind into the floor. His own dancing style was jerky, nothing like the usual, rolling swing of his hips. He thought he'd be the one to put on a show for the General, but he was also fine with watching, feeling, touching and enjoying… especially when Sephiroth did the little twisty thing with his arms above his head…

They were mostly sober when they spilled out of the club, still talking loudly from having become used to being submerged in noise. The sweat cooled on their skin quickly, and Sephiroth put his arm around Cloud to keep him within the circle of his heat.

The train ride home was a blur for most parties involved, every aboard was drunk or worse, and there appeared to be a woman turning tricks in the seat behind them. Every so often there was a loud, wet sucking pop of a noise, followed by a muttered apology that had both of them puzzled.

It happened about ten times in less than a minute before curiosity got the better of the General.

"I can't stand it anymore," Sephiroth whispered intensely to Cloud. "Take a look and tell me what they're doin'."

"I don't wanna look!" Cloud hissed.

"Find out what that poppin' sound is," Sephiroth urged again, elbowing him. "I'll wonder the rest of my life if I don't know."

Cloud frowned.

"Now."

Cloud instantly turned in the seat on his knees, and pushed down his hair to minimize his obviousness. He peered up over the seat for a moment until the wet pop and subsequent apology happened again, then turned back around, looking slightly pale and damaged. "You don't want to know what the popping sound is."

"Yes, I do."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"…The guy's glass eye keeps falling out."

Sephiroth laughed until he was bright red in the face and two watery trails of tears streamed from his eyes. Even though Cloud would be haunted for life, he was helpless but to join in on the infectious guffaw.

At the loft, the first love that they made that year was clumsy, messy, and not exactly the most picturesque of unions, but anything beyond immediate pleasure consisted of an effort that was just out of their reach. Sephiroth sprawled heavily and gracelessly over him, licking and kissing his face and neck, while Cloud was nothing but tightness, trembling limbs and clawing fingers.

Both knew it was sloppy but neither cared. It felt too good to care. In its own reckless, passionate way, it was the best sex they'd yet had.

Cloud obviously had no intention of going to school, which was evident as he curled beneath Sephiroth's arm. Work also felt like an optional obligation as pale blue morning light broke through Sephiroth's window. He actually considered getting up and readying himself for the busy day ahead, but the small face pressed into his neck and the gentle, affectionate sounds Cloud made threatened to lull him under.

"Are you leaving me?" Cloud mumbled, feeling Sephiroth's hesitation, even on the precipice of sleep.

"No," Sephiroth finally decided. "I'm not. Not today."

Cloud purred in appreciation and almost immediately began that little whirring in his throat that signaled sleep. Sephiroth brushed his nose against Cloud's hair, and inhaled the mix of smoke from the bar, sweat from their lovemaking, and that unidentifiable, soft smell underneath.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Shin-Ra was a different place when at war.

Well, they weren't at war. Nobody wanted to say war, again. Ever, if possible, even if war was what it was.

Active, was the new word coined by Shin-Ra's public relations department. The army was currently active.

Active was a word that suggested some sort of fun, but futhermore suggested a previous dormancy. What he knew from Sephiroth's life, the army was anything but lazy or dormant, always having someone to rescue, something to kill, somewhere to fly and someone to help. Heroes.

The school hallways were noticeably emptier without the tall, broadening figures of the junior SOLDIERs clogging the exits and being generally obnoxious. They were already fully grown men, but still carried the minds of undisciplined young boys while tripping the younger students and hogging all the best food in the cafeteria. But the days leading up to their departure, they were quiet, stoic, and solemn. And then, they were gone.

It was a Wednesday that they disappeared, as if the rapture came and left the younger boys alone at the school. It made them weary, skittish.

Every single year at the academy, several yearbook pages honored the names of the deceased. Cloud had seen it with his own eyes in the library, snooping around the older volumes for candid shots of Sephiroth while he was supposed to be researching. He'd found a few photos, nothing special, just his beloved looking off to the side, or caught surprised while eating his lunch. The juiciest picture he'd found was of his lankier, twinkier form in basketball shorts with his shoulder length hair tied back. But Sephiroth was a nobody then, so the real stars of the yearbook were the older boys, and of course, the departed.

They looked just like the young men who had left this year.

Some of them wouldn't be coming back.

Unfathomable.

Cloud made his way through the day, quickly cleaned up, and then walked to the Shin-Ra building. The same effect had filled their halls; less executives and more SOLDIERs all with the same yellow paper. Cloud had managed to sneak a peek at one of them in the elevator, and it was an air shuttle ticket, departure time, troop assignment, and oddly enough, some sort of little comic strip that he couldn't read. Apparently it was gut busting hilarious, if the SOLDIERs pointing and laughing on this kind of day was any indication.

He reached Sephiroth's floor, which looked rather normal for the most part. He zigged and zagged his way to his office, and was slightly deflated to find the door closed.

"You can go on in," Sephiroth's secretary said before he could gather the nerve to ask her for guidance.

He nodded and went to the door, but felt the need to tap his knuckles on it before cracking it open. He peered inside, and spied Sephiroth standing at one of the bookcases and holding files against his hip.

"Hey," He greeted without turning around.

"Hi," Cloud said softly before slipping in and gently closing the door behind him. "You got a haircut."

It was true, Sephiroth's bangs were trimmed to just above his jaw line, and a good foot of his length had been cut off. "Yeah, I got it cleaned up a little bit."

"It looks good," Cloud went over to him, and was given a small, chaste kiss, letting his fingers play in the shorter, edged fringe next to Sephiroth's ears. "Everyone's already gone at school… when do you leave?"

"Gotta get to the air dock and brief everybody at seven."

"So you're leaving at seven?"

"…Well, I gotta speak at seven, so I gotta leave around six. And I have a meetin' before then."

"How long do I have you for?" Cloud asked, getting right to the point.

"I need to start movin' in about twenty minutes."

Cloud's stomach clenched, and he felt a wave of dreadful nausea. Then, it quickly simmered until it became a hot, misplaced anger. How dare Sephiroth be a General! How dare he have to leave!

"Why did you make me go to school today?!" Cloud suddenly snapped, glaring through a film of furious water covering his eyes.

Sephiroth looked at him for a moment before rumbling in a non-playful tone, "You missed school last week. And it wouldn't have mattered if you were here. I didn't have time for you today, Cloud."

"You said you'd make time for me!"

"I went dancing for you on New Year's. I drank disgusting shit for you. I made pancakes for you the next day… and last Saturday you stayed over, didn't you have a good time, then? And during the holiday week before that?"

"It doesn't matter," Cloud creaked out miserably, fighting tears still.

"I worked hard to make that time for you. And it doesn't matter?" Sephiroth paused, before snorting softly, his patience maxed out. "You're impossible to please, Cloud. I won't bother tryin', next time."

Cloud's head snapped up. "I didn't mean it like that – "

"Yeah. You did."

Cloud growled defiantly. "I didn't mean it like that!… Don't be like this. Don't leave me angry!"

"Cloud…" Sephiroth moaned patronizingly, replacing the files in his bookcase haphazardly and took out different ones. "You know what? I don't have the space left in my skull to muster up the emotion required to be angry with you. So if you came here to piss an' whine at me… just get the fuck out."

For the next several moments, Cloud became… nothing. He had no thoughts, no feelings, no physical or mental activity in his body whatsoever. Slowly, his heart began to beat again, his blood began to pump again, and with that, a rush of blood flooded to his face so quickly it almost made him dizzy.

Cloud didn't blink, but two streaks of salty water flooded from his eyes anyways. Sephiroth just stood there with his arms full of files, looking disappointed, annoyed, and somewhat… resentful.

Never in Cloud's entire life did he feel like such a foolish, spoiled child. Never.

"I'm a brat," he admitted.

"Yep," Sephiroth agreed, somehow without a single drop of sarcasm, which only made it sting more.

"And incredibly selfish."

"Damn straight."

"…I'm sorry."

"You act like this is some sort of party you're not invited to. I don't wanna leave, you do realize that, right? This isn't a vacation to the Northern fuckin' Crater. There ain't nothin' I can do to help this situation, but go there and do what I have to do. This is my job. I cannot apologize for having to go, but when you come here and cry and look like… the fuckin' prettiest doll I've ever seen in my life, it frustrates the fuck out of me, Cloud."

"I'm sorry!" He repeated, drying his face. "I couldn't think of it from your end…"

"You didn't need to come by today. The other night should have just been goodbye."

"I'm sorry, so sorry…" Cloud repeated, feeling an inch tall. "I don't feel like you're leaving me on purpose, Seph. It's just… hard for me to think past myself, sometimes..."

Sephiroth hiked an eyebrow.

Cloud turned even redder. "Okay, all the time! You just feel so good, and I love you so much, and I'm going to miss you so much… I know it's selfish of me, but it's almost like you just woke up from being sick a couple of weeks ago, and now you're being taken from me again."

After all his rambling there was a long silence, and Cloud finally looked up to find a small smile hinting on Sephiroth's lips. He plopped his files on his desk with a patronizing weariness. "You exhaust me, baby."

"…Is that bad?"

Sephiroth didn't need to think it over. "No way. You're fun."

"Even if I'm clingy?"

"I think I like clingy," He answered, his smile widening as he got closer to the emotional wreck of a blonde. "And I lied, before. I'm glad you came by today to say goodbye to me."

Cloud managed a smile, and twisted his fingers together and looked up at Sephiroth hopefully as he approached. A gloved hand ran through his hair and pulled his head against his chest, holding him.

It was all he really wanted, just a moment to share with him. The silence that followed was a warm one, but loaded with unsaid words. But what was the point of saying any of them and muddying up the already tainted occasion?

Cloud licked his lips and chose different ones. "Come back safe."

"You don't have to worry about that," Sephiroth assured.

"I probably will. So you have to call me all the time."

"Time zone's different. You're at school during my nights."

"Oh," Cloud frowned. "Call me anyways. Leaves messages if I can't pick up. Text me, too. At least once a day so I know you're alright, promise?"

"I promise." Sephiroth's Adam's apple moved against his cheek, and a deep rumble reverberated when he softly inquired, "Make sure to keep on lovin' me."

"Yes!" Cloud exclaimed with a sudden, melodramatic mixture of misery and passion, tightening his fists in Sephiroth's coat and shaking him slightly. Sephiroth sputtered on laughter, although Cloud was a little too far gone in his inner Gone with the Wind fantasies to notice. "Will you still love me?"

"The thing about leavin' for duty is… it's scary to think about things changin' while you're away. Mostly because the things you want, and the way you feel about things doesn't change at all. It's like time stops for you. And when you get home, you hope that everything can be exactly as it was."

Cloud got the meaning, but had to hear it, anyways. "So… is that a yes?"

"Yes. Fuck, yes. You're the first thing I'm gonna wanna see when I come back, whether it's just a couple weeks, or months. It won't matter to me. I'll need you bad."

Cloud was tremendously relieved in that regard, but it was a shallow relief that was only a tiny Christmas tree bulb amount of light in the sea of dark anxiety. He pressed his nose harder against Sephiroth's collarbone. "I love you. We'll be better than ever when you get back. Even if you get back on our six month anniversary."

"Sounds good," Sephiroth agreed, then tightened his grip. "I don't wanna say this… But.. nah, nevermind."

"What?"

"Nuthin'."

"What?" Cloud pressed.

"Don't fuck anyone, okay?" Sephiroth blurted.

"Seph…" Cloud moaned against his leather lapel. "You don't need to worry about that."

"But I will, so you gotta text me and lemme know you still want me, once a day. Text me every time you pop a stiffy. Gotta promise." Sephiroth mimicked Cloud gently with teasing, but the serious meaning was still there, hiding behind his tone.

Cloud giggled. "Yes, Sir."

"I'll say again, that I'll crack anyone's skull that touches you. Then I'll crack yours for lettin' 'em."

Cloud was filled to the brim with some sort of unidentifiable warmth from that declaration. But instead of letting it be known, he merely nuzzled slightly before tsking. "I should be more worried about you, pretty. Off to war, surrounded by hundreds of hot men who adore you…"

"Yeah, right. Everyone's gonna be smelly, and dirty, and not you."

Cloud giggled against his shoulder. "I don't want anyone but you. Not ever."

A few more minutes ticked away until finally Sephiroth said it. "I need to go, babe."

"Okay," Cloud said, his fists uncurling from the leather and smoothing it out. He was not ready to leave, or let go. But it didn't matter, because he never would be. So he turned towards the door with the intent of leaving with his dignity intact.

Sephiroth caught his belt loop with two fingers. "No kiss?"

Cloud pursed his lips, and said nothing. The very last thing he wanted on Earth was to have that fire of desire lit inside of him, one that wouldn't be extinguished for some time to come.

Sephiroth understood why there was hesitation. "…I know if I let you leave without at least a kiss… I'm gonna be kickin' myself in the ass."

A small smile flickered on Cloud's face, and slowly he leaned down, pausing when he met Sephiroth's warm, smooth cushioned mouth. He gave a sweet, tender peck. Then another. And another. And another. Then a hot tongue flicked against his closed lips and he felt Sephiroth's fingers in his belt loop draw him closer.

Cloud screamed bloody murder in his mind. He needed to kiss Sephiroth as though he might not see him ever again.

Leaping up, he locked his arms around Sephiroth's neck and kissed his lips without reserve or hesitation, as his fingers curling into his hair to hold him close. Sephiroth cupped the back of Cloud's skull, kissing him as if he wanted to crawl inside of him.

They eased and slowed when their teeth began to click and grind together. Cloud tilted his head to end that distraction and nudged his tongue past Sephiroth's lips, getting his last sample of that unique taste he'd come to associate with passion and love. It was the taste of the inside of a carnivore's mouth, hot and alive and delicious and –

A loud, embarrassed voice broke through the roar of blood in both of their ears. "Our bad!…"

There had been only one, unheard knock on Sephiroth's door before it swung open and Zack, Angeal, and Genesis had strolled inside. Cloud only saw a flash of them, because all three retreated just as quickly as they'd came, and closed the door softly.

The damage was done, though. Sephiroth's tongue gave one more kittenish lick before it curled back and the kiss was gently closed off.

"I'm sorry 'bout that," Sephiroth panted softly.

Whether he was apologizing for the interruption, or the all too brief act of passion, it didn't matter, because neither were his fault. Cloud couldn't speak; he only shook his head, hoping Sephiroth could understand the meaning.

After a few deep breaths to steady his pulse, Sephiroth set him on his feet and ran a hand through his bangs as Cloud straightened out his clothes. Sephiroth took the files from his desk and led Cloud to the door, and closed and locked it behind them.

"Here," Sephiroth suddenly said, and held the keys out to Cloud.

Cloud gazed at them for a moment before opening his palm and accepting them.

"If you ever need someplace to be, you can go to my place. Or if you need a ride somewhere for whatever reason, use the truck" Sephiroth explained as his fingers reached out to twist the longest tress of blonde that framed Cloud's face. Then he tugged on it in warning. "Be careful with the truck if you use it. It's my other baby."

Cloud grinned. "Basically, don't drive like you?"

Sephiroth nodded. "Exactly."

They stood looking at each other for another moment or two, before Sephiroth took a step backwards and lifted a hand to pinch his nose. "Smell you later."

Leave it to him to find a way to make Cloud smile, even now. "Love you!"

Cloud then turned and headed towards the elevators. He tried not to look back, but he did.

Sephiroth was gone.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud violently wept.

Cam awkwardly hovered over his bed, rubbing his back and touching his shoulders, while offering useless words of comfort. Even Psycho purred in concern and walked in restless circles on his bed.

"…He's gone …He's gone!" Cloud repeated over and over, clutching onto Cam when he finally sat on the bed and held him uncertainly.

He was gone, he was gone, he was gone.

Cloud didn't know how many days it would be before he came back. There was a countdown starting at one with an end unknown.

It wasn't even day one, yet.

"He ain't dead, Cloud," Cam said firmly. "He'll be back."

Cloud sniffed and nodded, finally drawing back from Cam, whose shirt had become wet and slightly crusty with snot, saliva, and tears. His throat was thirsty and ragged, so without even taking the effort to make himself pretty, they walked together to the cafeteria for something to drink, his red eyes and face not entirely out of place due to the evening snowstorm.

Cam was a great help, but the heartache had burrowed itself a hole. He was worried about Sephiroth; his lover's life, his well being, and their future together. Although they had shared some warm, promising words, it did nothing to comfort now that he was facing the reality that he was gone. Sephiroth was gone. Gone!

"I feel so pathetic," Cloud croaked with a cracked, raw voice, and sipped his tea angrily at what the future had to offer him. "I'm like some stupid girl. I can't help it…"

"S'not stupid. S'not girly, either. Just real normal," Cam promised. "Anyone'd feel dis way. I'd be cryin' my head off, too."

Cloud went to bed. When he woke up, before his eyes had even fully opened, he was filled with a terrible, horrible dread. One wicked thought wormed into his brain, adding guilt on top of everything: At least when Sephiroth had been in a coma… he'd been able to see him every single day.

Was he really so self centered that he'd rather see his lover hurt than to not see him at all? His mother was right; love had made him become a complete, stark raving lunatic. He refused to let his desire for Sephiroth turn him into an obsessive basket case. He'd done too much growing in the past year to let himself become so warped and sad, especially not over something so temporary.

Sephiroth's career was far more important than Cloud's craving for kisses and snuggles.

Besides, he was a man. Men didn't require kisses, nor snuggles.

He'd just have to stand alone and be strong. And most importantly of all, as a SOLDIER, he'd have to trust his General. If Sephiroth loved him, he'd had to trust that it would be strong enough to last.

He didn't cry that morning. The military was changing Cloud.

With that reality, he'd gotten out of bed and done his best in school, humorless and steadfast. He'd watched his instructors as they taught with rapt, narrow, piercing blue eyes, drinking in every word's full meaning until his math teacher actually told him to chill out on the intense staring.

Drum class had him banging, and sword training had him concentrated and quick. Even though the instructors often scolded Cloud on his tendency to swing his sword like an axe, they quieted this day, and let his form fall into what was natural for him. And it seemed to work.

Cloud trudged back to his room, hoping to be exhausted enough to fall into bed without a thought and sleep for the next month or two, but his head was full of words and pictures and dimming, unignorable self pity as it hit the pillow.

Music made it worse.

So, off to the gym with Cam he went. He didn't often indulge in the loud grunting that the other boys did while lifting weights, but he was really feeling it. Besides, the fuzzy feeling of being fully involved with the group was stimulating and addictive. With every pump of his arms, he snarled up at Cam, who was happy to snarl back. The other boys snarled as well.

Frankly, it was awfully gay.

Sore and tired, the gym rat pack went to eat some dinner together at the cafeteria. Cloud usually went for salads and chicken and fruits, but instead, he was feeling a taste for something fattening and greasy. He realized what he'd done when he crunched down onto a deep fried cheese stick and immediately tasted Sephiroth. His body reacted in an unwelcome way; half of it recoiled in grief, the other half warmed as his mouth salivated for more than just food.

He took his carton of chocolate milk and feigned muscle cramps, and walked jerkily out of the cafeteria, only to break into a fast sprint the minute he hit the cold outside air.

Cloud was going to run away to the Northern Crater.

He was gonna fucking thumb it.

When he arrived, Sephiroth would surely let him stay in his cot, or his tent, or his sleeping bag, or his luxury hotel suite, or wherever the hell he we currently residing. He could do his schoolwork by mail, and maybe get some extra credit for, you know, being in a war and all.

Cloud got as far as the electric gate at the edge of the plate. He looked down at the endless expanse of dirty, polluted land that stretched out beyond the downtown slums, and opened his chocolate milk. It had turned partially to ice.

He then actually felt the cold, as if he had been placed in the middle of a snowball. He almost was, as the snow was falling at a rate that had his boots almost completely covered in white. People passed him by with tsks as he was standing in only his pilates pants and a wife beater.

Life couldn't have gotten much worse. He momentarily considered throwing himself off the upper plate of Midgar in a protest against the Northern Crater battle. Instead, he turned around to go back the way he came, back home. Home was the Shin-Ra military academy, and that's where he belonged. Not riding Sephiroth's back through battle.

He was too cold and tired to walk anymore, so instead he went to the train station, and dug out a couple gil in change for a ticket. He sat in the orgasmically wonderful warmth of the train station like a regular orphan, pulling his knees up to his chin to warm himself.

His legs were so numb and sore, he hadn't felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. It was when he pulled it out to check the time that he found a missed call from Sephiroth, plus three unread texts, and one voice message.

The train arrived, and he quickly boarded and prepared himself to slowly explore the digital affection that had been left for him by his lover.

Its coldas fuck here!! The first text read.

Cloud cracked a smile, and read the next one.

I saw something reminded me of you. Guess what……

Cloud tried to, but couldn't. He went to the next text, that was sent about half a minute later.

Baby seals. Remember them at the zoo? Babies, tho. They were playing. You woulda shat yourself.

Cloud snickered a little against the palm if his hand, because it was absolutely true. He probably would have held up the entire company to watch them. He decided to listen to his message before returning a text, and laid his head against his heated seat.

"Hey. We landed alright. I'm staying in an igloo if you can fuckin' believe that," Cloud then heard a voice that he thought might have been Angeal's in the background argue that it wasn't an igloo. "It looks like an igloo from the outside. Maybe it's just a cabin. But it's cold here, and I absolutely hate it. I thought that might cheer you up… And that's all I have to say. Night, babe."

Cloud called on impulse, his thumb smacked against the button on its own.

It rang until it was sent to voicemail.

He cleared his throat a bit. "Hi. I went out for a run tonight, and I started thinking and went too far, so I'm riding the train back home. I worked hard in school, you'd be proud of me. I'm not sure about straight A's, but I think I'll do well this semester. It's cold here, too… but not as bad as there. But you do get baby seal action, so it can't be all that bad," Cloud sighed a little, wanting to say something serious, but not something that would make Sephiroth feel any farther than he already was. "I can't wait to have you again. Talk to you, soon."

He closed the phone and smiled.

No more tears.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud woke up, his eyes drifting apart. A faint blue light cast shadows on his wall from the window, the early morning sunshine eclipsed by snow. The colors, the composition, the cold.

It usually felt like home, but it didn't. Not without Sephiroth.

It was the first time in the three weeks that had passed that Cloud had gone to Sephiroth's empty apartment. He'd been lying in his bed on a Saturday morning, petting Psycho idly while listening to music, staring at nothing but memories. The first week without his lover had been difficult at first, but got better after he accepted things and moved on. The second week was strangely manic and happy as he desperately busied himself with other things. That third week had been just as manic, but lonely.

They talked on the phone almost daily, usually just before Sephiroth went to sleep, and when Cloud was between classes and had only five minutes to speak. But it was enough for Cloud to know that Sephiroth was safe, and for Sephiroth to know that Cloud was well, and loved him.

The texts were more frequent, sometimes Sephiroth sent briefly worded, descriptively lewd messages. If they were designed just to throw Cloud off during his day, they succeeded fabulously. The worst was when his pocket vibrated during math class with this simple message: I want in you.

Cloud's entire day was ruined after that. He could barely function.

Cloud's fingers tangled then smoothed through Psycho's fur, and he closed his eyes, ready to fall back asleep as soon as his Mp3 player's batteries finally gave out. Sleep was good, sleep made the time pass, and sleep offered up dreams in which Sephiroth was near.

"M'goin' out for the weekend!" Cam had declared jovially, rousing Cloud from the border of blissful oblivion.

"Where are you going?" Cloud snorted, opening one eye and shifting slightly. "Take me with you, I wanna go, too!"

"Not this time, shawty. Michelle's folks are leavin' for a week."

Cloud yawned. "Are you two finally going to have sex indoors?"

Due to a very limited amount of locations the two could unite in holy heterosexual bliss, Cam and Michelle's sex life happened whenever and wherever it could. She was a year older and more experienced, but poor Cam had lost his virginity on an almost empty train car in broad daylight. As it turned out, the guy sleeping eight rows in front of them turned out to be dead.

The way Cam told the tale, it seemed awfully romantic.

Since then, no alleyway, movie theatre or public restroom was safe from the two of them and their fluids. Empty laundry rooms, mail drop off boxes, parked delivery trucks, bleachers, gazebos, beneath tables in restaurants… as the locations and situations became wackier and more diverse, Cloud began to think that maybe the two liked getting off in public.

But at least it gave use to the 400 condoms Cloud still had in his possession. Since he'd offered them to Cam after he complained about the outrageous price of getting laid, all 400 of them had moved permanently into Cam's closet, where the count was now considerably lower and scattered across the city.

"We fuck indoors all tha time!" Cam defended, throwing items into a purple duffle bag. "You're usually gone all fuckin' weekend, ya know."

Cloud had paused, realizing that he indeed usually was. He chuckled, although it was slightly hollow. "You sneak her in here?"

"Just a couple a times. We fucked on your bed, once."

Cloud was suddenly wide awake. "Are you serious? Ewww! You're serious!"

"Was an accident!" Cam laughed.

"My ass!" Cloud guffawed. "You just wanted another place on your world wide fuck map! Cloud's bed? Check!"

"You tellin' me you an' Seph didn't screw around in here? Gimme a fuckin' break!"

"Well it definitely wasn't on your bed!" Cloud snarked, for a moment awash in a vivid memory that manifested itself, oddly enough, with the linen taste of his tie. "When he gets back, I'm having him shoot all over your pillow."

Cam hummed. "I ain't gay, but dat guy can shoot all over my fuckin' face if he really wanted to."

Cam departed, and there Cloud was. Homesick for Sephiroth, alone, and bored. So, he'd packed a little bag, put some extra food out for Psycho, and had taken the train to Sephiroth's place.

He'd turned on all the lights, put on a movie that had nothing to do with murder or gore, and sat on Sephiroth's couch. It was too quiet, too cold. Eerie. There were still a few random little leftovers from Christmas in his fridge, two onion rolls and a little frost bitten wedge of kidney casserole, the perfect comfort food. So Cloud heated it up and ate it, hating that the only sounds were the clinking of his fork and the stale television noise.

Without Sephiroth, his place was just a big, empty series of rooms. Echoes that were usually charming now just emphasized his solitude. He couldn't even muster up the pluckiness to snoop or walk around naked. It was just all wrong, and no fun without the possibility of being caught, so he'd gone to bed.

The next morning, Cloud rolled around in the sheets, stirring up the scent in them. Sadly enough, he bunched up a few large pillows and cuddled into them, clutching one and pressing his face into it.

If he just closed his eyes… used his imagination a little…

His mental Sephiroth was rusty and unused, but he was still there to be called upon. Cloud could smell him. Sephiroth's hands trailed down his stomach and over his hip, down to barely tease his soft genitals before finally resting on Cloud's throat. As sleep began to recapture him the fantasy fleshed out in his mind, every neuron in his brain feeling hot skin instead of cool linen.

Before he could freefall into unawareness, a chorus of chimes signaled an incoming cell phone call, thus shattering his illusion and yanking him into reality: a sleepy, lovesick faggot, alone and bundled up into his lover's pillows.

He huffed in disgust, rolled over, and reached into his bag. He'd half expected to see Sephiroth's name on the ID, but it sent a shiver through his insides, anyways. He answered with a giggle. "I was just thinking about you!"

"No shit," Sephiroth said, sounding tired and somewhat smooshed, as if his face were halfway pressed into a pillow.

"I totally was. Are you in bed?"

"Not exactly what I'd call a bed, but I'm sleepin' on it," Sephiroth answered dryly. "I wanted ta call before I conked out. What time is it, there?"

"Almost nine in the morning. I'm still in bed, too... Your bed, actually."

Sephiroth gave a happy sounding yawn. "Alright, I'll have your little come puddles all over my sheets when I get home."

"I'm not doing anything like that! I just wanted to be here… I..."

"Don't gotta explain, s'why I left you the keys."

"This is the longest we've gotten to talk in a while," Cloud commented, sinking back down into the body pillow he'd made. "I miss you."

"I miss you," Sephiroth echoed. "You sound pretty good right about now."

Cloud snickered at being spoken of like something edible. "You sound good, too. I was imagining you were here with me right before you called."

"Oh yeah? What was I doin'?"

"You were holding me," Cloud answered intimately.

"That's sweet. Too bad it's bullshit."

"Bullshit!?" Cloud crowed.

"Utter bullshit. That is absolutely not what I'd be doin' to ya if I was there, trust me."

"What would you be doing, then?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would like to know…" Cloud bit his thumb. "…Can I?"

Sephiroth laughed coyly. "Can you what?..."

"It just seems a crime that I have a cell phone and everything now, and we haven't had a chance to talk dirty, yet…"

"And you won't hafta whisper, like on the public phone," Sephiroth murmured, tickling Cloud's ear from across the planet. "…and repeat it about a thousand times so I can hear ya."

"You could so hear it!" Cloud argued happily. "You just liked making me say it over and over!"

"Am I that easy to figure out?"

"Yes!" Cloud giggled. "So… I don't know how to begin…"

"There's always this: whatcha got on?"

Cloud hated his answer, but it was the truth. "Nothing."

Sephiroth barked on laughter. "Liar!"

"I swear! I'm still in bed, and I haven't gotten up or dressed yet. What have you got on?"

Sephiroth chuckled softly. "I'm not comfortable enough with where we're at to take my clothes off. Got my uniform on."

Cloud burrowed down into the covers. He trailed a hand down between his legs, where his anatomy was wide awake with the sound of Sephiroth's voice and a little bit of heavy flirtation. He stroked himself slowly. "Mmm. So…"

"Mmm, so…" Sephiroth echoed with a smile, knowing damn well what Cloud was up to so many miles away.

"Sooo, answer my first question. If you were with me right now, what would you do?"

"Kiss you," Sephiroth answered automatically, and it sent prickles across Cloud's ear and down his neck. "You don't know how bad I wanna kiss you. I'd do that, definitely. And when you finally put your tongue in my mouth, I'd snatch it and suck on it – "

"You always do that!" Cloud giggled wildly, blushing at things they did being spoken aloud.

"I know I always do that, and I do it with enthusiasm… 'Cause it makes you think of me suckin' your cock, doesn't it?"

"Little bit…" Cloud admitted, biting his lip.

"And it gets ya all hot and bothered?"

"…Little bit."

Sephiroth spoke slowly and narratively. "Close your eyes… imagine I'm there… imagine me kissin' all over you… now, bite your tongue, just a little…"

Cloud sighed.

Sephiroth grinned in his ear. "Did your cock jump?"

"…Why are you so good at this?" Cloud breathed being fluttering eyelashes, thoroughly seduced by just the sound of his lover's voice.

"If I didn't have a good imagination, I'da died a long time ago. Now talk to me."

"… Oh, I'd… dunno..." Cloud suddenly felt his vocabulary dammed, unable to voice what actions he would take, as he never really thought too much about what he did with Sephiroth as he did it, for fear of losing his nerve. But he closed his eyes and created a vision, putting an effort to describe what it was he saw. "I've missed you badly, so I'm a little bit impatient right now. I want to try and hurry you along, because I need you. I just unzip your pants, because you said you weren't able to take your clothes off…" Cloud hoped Sephiroth got the hint and did it to himself. "And I'd pull you out... lay back and pull you down with me. And you know..." Cloud's face burned. "...spread my legs for you."

"I'm fuckin' dyin' to get between 'em…" Sephiroth responded, his voice slow, deep and dark. "I think you need lube."

Cloud paused in his sultry vision. "This is just phone sex, we don't have to get that involved."

"We do. I want you to fuck yourself."

Cloud blushed harder. "…With our Boyfriend?"

Sephiroth chuckled at the nickname. "Sure, go get him."

Cloud wished he had powers to float the needed items over to himself. But he didn't, so he kicked off his covers and grabbed his erection so it wouldn't wag painfully as he skittered to the closet to retrieve the toy. He pulled the tube of lubricant out of the bedside table before worming back under the warmed sheets.

"Okay, got it."

"Lay back and pull one knee up," Sephiroth said in a manner that couldn't be argued with.

Cloud did as he was told and hooked his wrist under one knee to hold it in place. "Okay."

"Squeeze out some lube, and spread it all over your little asshole."

Cloud gasped shrilly. "Ew! Don't say asshole!"

"Why not? It is your asshole."

Cloud frowned a little. "That's not a romantic word…"

"I'm sorry baby, I won't say it."

"Do you think it when we make love?! Is that what it is to you?!"

"Um…no." Was the unsure reply.

"Don't think it!" Cloud wailed, humiliated.

Sephiroth sighed in impatience. "I won't think it, I swear. Now, squeeze out some lube all over your cupcake factory."

"SEPH!"

"Shut tha fuck up," Sephiroth grinned wolfishly. "Push a finger in, already. I wanna hear it."

Cloud didn't have a chance to be impatient or huffy, he was too intrigued by the way his lover was speaking. His clipped and low tones gave away the fact that he was probably hard and solid. Maybe even moving his long fingered fist up and down on it... why wonder? "Seph… are you touching yourself?"

"Yeah."

That thought propelled Cloud's hands into motion. He brushed his fingers across the puddle of lubricant pooling at his opening, mentally preparing himself for penetration. He then moved the phone down, aiming it between his legs. When he pushed his middle finger in, there was a small, wet, barely audible sound of breaching.

"…Did you hear?" Cloud asked softly, resting the cell phone between his chin and the pillow.

Sephiroth grunted his affirmative, and then slowly suggested, "How would you feel about takin' pictures?"

"Seeeph…" Cloud whined. "I don't think I can do that."

"Why not?"

"I'll have to look at myself! That's… weird…"

"Then you'll see how sexy you are," Sephiroth suggested with a smile.

"Well it's obvious you have no problem looking at your own naked, perfect body… but I don't think I can – "

"I'll owe you one." Sephiroth interrupted silkily.

"…Two. And you have to send them first!"

"Whatever it takes," Sephiroth gloated, and Cloud heard him rustle around a bit on his end.

"Okay, say somethin' sexy," Sephiroth requested once he found himself presentable.

"I've been… fingering myself a lot since you've left."

Sephiroth made a soft noise, and then became curious. "…Why?"

"It feels good," Cloud smiled. "And I wanna be as ready as possible for you, when you come home to me."

Sephiroth made a long, low sound of approval. He then laughed. "It's too easy. I shoulda starred in my own goddamn porno!"

Almost instantaneously, Cloud's phone blipped that he had received a picture message. He eagerly switched screens to view it.

And sweet little baby Jesus… Sephiroth was lying on a very crude, simple cot. He was fully clothed, sans armor, his coat unbuttoned and his cock jutting from his leather pants. He was stroking himself, and while it was large, hard and needy, Cloud's eyes were drawn to the top of the small picture.

There, the bottom half of Sephiroth's face was visible. He was smiling while biting his bottom lip, revealing a little touch of shyness that he probably didn't intend to capture in the photo. And it was that tiny hint of insecurity that made Cloud's fingers work inside himself a bit deeper, searching for his pleasure point.

His breath caught just a little in his throat when he found it. "Seph, you are so fucking hot."

"Only for you." He commented, and Cloud's phone received the second promised picture. He eagerly viewed it, and instead of assorted body parts, it was only Sephiroth's face with his lips puckered sweetly.

Cloud grinned at that, because to him, that was just as good as porn. He then sighed with heavy reservation. "Okay, my turn... how do I get the camera to work?"

Sephiroth chuckled. "Press the button that says camera, sweetness."

Cloud did, and instantly his phone screen became the eye. His stomach jolted in nervousness. "…What should I do?"

"Whatever you think would get me off."

Cloud rolled his eyes and kicked the sheets off of himself, trying in vain to pat down his bed head before thinking that perhaps it might add something to the image. He then hesitantly spread his legs wide on the bed, and hovered the camera over himself.

He was too nervous, he needed some real inspiration. He put the phone back to his ear.

"Will you say something sexy?" Cloud requested earnestly.

Sephiroth offered a rarely used voice, the sort of voice a little boy uses to ask for a cookie. "Please work that hot little ass for me?"

Cloud moaned a little at the crudeness that he loved so dearly, and he held out the phone and let his thumb capture the image. His face went bright red as the camera took a moment to load the new picture, which he regarded with a wince.

In the split second of the photograph, his two fingers were spreading himself wide apart just underneath the rigid swell of his cock, revealing a hidden pinkness inside of himself that he never knew was there. His body was bent at an angle that not only caused a ripple through his abs, but also allowed his entire face to be caught in the shot.

Cloud was stuck in a moment of overall shock at the image. He looked hot and flustered, a little shy, and… pretty.

People had called him pretty all his life, in both cruelty and kindness, but he'd never looked at himself in a photograph and actually saw it before. Maybe because he had always been fully clothed in all previous photos.

Cloud always did think he looked better without clothes on, now he had photographic evidence. Conveniently enough, an option popped up to send the photo to the current caller. Cloud hit 'yes' before he could talk himself out of it, but declined the save the image.

Sephiroth was quiet for a moment as he received the message, before bursting out with an uncharacteristically vibrant, "GODDAAAMN!"

Cloud sputtered laughter. "Was that a good 'goddamn'?"

Sephiroth panted out a chuckle of amusement, then groaned a little. "Lemme see more."

"If you want to see more, you have to send more!"

A few seconds later, Cloud received a photo of Sephiroth from his chiseled lower abs down, even more lined and tight than before with the efforts of war. He was fisting his erection, slick and flushed and utterly delectable.

Cloud's mouth literally watered. He slid a third digit inside himself, wiggling his hips slightly against it, and it inspired a flow of heated, whispered words. "I love your cock... I love how it feels inside me. Do you know that?"

Sephiroth took a moment longer than usual to respond, and when he did, it was thick and deep. "…What's it feel like? Tell me."

Cloud sighed lengthily. "The best pain I've ever felt, better than I ever thought it could have been. You… you…" Cloud didn't know how to explain any further than that, and hoped whatever he had said made some kind of sense.

"I'm glad. Just imagine that's what's in you, instead of your fingers. God I wish I could fuck you…" Sephiroth's words were simple, but his rumbling voice and soft moans caused Cloud to shiver and arch up, wishing he would bump up into and brush against a hard, heated body.

"What does it feel like for you, Seph?"

"I'd sound like a fuckin' idiot if I tried to describe it," He answered, which surprised Cloud, and slightly disappointed him, until Sephiroth continued. "It's just …perfect. Sometimes I want you so bad I could kill somebody. I could jerk off eight hundred times in a row. It's not the same as bein' with you."

Cloud grunted in passionate agreement. "I knooow! It's never enough…" He then decided that this was quickly turning from a fuck call into a whine-fest, so he decided to steer the conversation back to the matters at, erm, hand. "…but luckily… we're together right now. Not alone, together… and I'm ready for you. Right now."

"I'd stick it in – "

"Don't say 'stick'."

Sephiroth chucked a little. "I'd… slide it in. All the way."

Cloud nodded a little. "It feels the best when I put my legs over your shoulders."

"I like it when your toes pull my hair."

Cloud laughed a little at that, "You do? I usually try not to… I like the way your legs spread out more when mine are on your shoulders. I like how you move."

"I'll spread 'em out as far as they go if that's what you like, baby. It turns me on so fucking much when you keep your eyes open, and watch."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The conversation degraded down into affirmatives and swear words at that point, every so often with a small piece of imaginary commentary. Cloud wanted to be kissed. Sephiroth angled his lower stomach down so it would grind into Cloud's cock. Cloud locked his ankles behind Sephiroth's head. Sephiroth suddenly became fascinated with Cloud's nipples.

Every press of his fingers felt like that first shattering half second of climax, over and over, and he whimpered as his own erection responded by emitting a long, slow drop that tickled down his length.

He put Sephiroth on speakerphone and put in on the pillow while he let his other hand trail down to wrap around his erection. His hips lifted up and he moaned raggedly, lost in the soft panting on the other end of the phone. "Yea… Seph…I'm close."

"M'too. I can't be loud, but… don't you dare hold back. Lemme hear you."

Cloud's wet fingers dug deep inside of himself and the other hand pumped in that twisting, heavily practiced way. It only took a few more moments before he slingshotted himself to a jolting, grinding release. He closed his eyes and lost himself as his orgasm swept through him. He let whatever noises rose in his throat free, all the quick, high pitched squeaks and long, guttural groans, and it truly seemed, in that hot moment, that he wasn't alone.

It was like lingering on the border of a dream, and he could feel Sephiroth's heat, the sharpness of his hipbones, a stray lock of hair or two tickling his legs. He slowed his fingers only when he heard a shallow gasp in his ear, signaling Sephiroth's climax on the other side of the world, and reality came back into perspective.

He cupped his balls, kneading them softly through a stream of brief aftershocks as he heard Sephiroth grunt softly, curse, then let out a little gust of air.

"Fuuuck.." Sephiroth panted after a few breathy moments. "This phone thing is the best fuckin' idea I've ever had."

Cloud panted softly. "Aw, damn. I forgot the use our Boyfriend."

"Next time."

Cloud blew a kiss into the camera, laughing at a speck of ejaculate that had found its' way onto his cheek, then sent it along to Sephiroth. There was an affectionate chuckle from his end and he took a picture of himself just laying there with a small smile on his face, his clothes were already rebuttoned and he a scratchy looking blanket pulled up to his chest.

Cloud gazed at it for a moment, then shifted lazily to clean up. "Please don't show anyone those pictures."

"I was gonna print 'em out and put 'em on my desk."

"You better not! Those are just for you."

"You think I'd share this? Gimme a break," Sephiroth then snorted. "Don't show my cock off to anyone, either. I realize there's a lot of money to be found in it, but I'm shy."

"I would sooner die!" And Cloud meant that. Those thick, strong inches were his and his alone, and he couldn't be more thrilled to have his own private collection of genuine General Sephiroth spank bank. No porn star in a wig for him, although if he'd found that video two years prior, he'd probably have been the first teenage boy to die of masturbation.

Sephiroth suddenly sounded dog tired, and was quickly fading. "Alright baby… I'ma let you go."

Cloud was genuinely disappointed, as he was locked firmly in a stage of affectionate, flirtatious afterglow. "Aww. I guess you do need to sleep, huh?"

He smiled. "I'm gonna sleep good. You prolly got shit to do anyways."

Cloud pouted, as that wasn't the case at all. But he lied. "Yeah, I've got shit to take care of. I love you, General Sephiroth. Sweet dreams."

"You know it." And then the connection was gone.

Cloud laid on his side, blinking in the morning light. It wasn't so bad, the distance. They could still make love. Sort of.

At the very least, he didn't have to rinse his ass out.

CHAPTER IMAGES

1 – http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch19-Jealousy-112416268

2 – http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-ch19-Porn-112416197

A/N

1 - After Blonde Ambition 2 is finished, I intend on writing a Genesis x Rufus fic set in the Blonde Ambition-verse. I'll offer glimpses in BA, but there is an actual story there, haha. It's either going to be called 'A Tale of Two Bitches' or 'Lonesome No More'. But yeah, it's going to be a train wreck, and I can't wait.

2 - I worked on this chapter for a looong tiiiime. I couldn't fit nearly all I wanted to, which seems to be the trend for me, hence chapter NINE-fucking-TEEN. Every chapter seems to be longer than the last, this one clocking in at well over 19,000 words. But there's lots and lots of fun to be had, so I hope I'm not boring anyone with my long winded self.


	20. Alive

WARNING BE TO ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE : This chapter is longer than it has any right to be. It also may or may not be haunted by pirate ghosts. You might wanna hit the bathroom and grab a Scooby snack before you dig in.

When Cloud Strife decided that it was time to make someone a mix CD, it became an all-day, soul-searching endeavor.

He realized it was technically his turn in the CD trading game. Even if it had gone mostly unspoken since they'd gotten together, written off as just a cute thing they'd done in order to get into each other's pants, it was still their game and it was currently hanging in limbo. After all, hearing verbally how much Cloud was missing him was nothing new to Sephiroth's big, adorable ears. In musical format, perhaps he could fan some flames of longing in his lover.

It would soon be a full two months since the day Cloud had kissed Sephiroth goodbye in his office.

Their first Valentine's Day had passed. It was the very first time in his life that he actually had someone to love on such on occasion, and he was unable to actively do so. It was enough to make his heart want to leap out of his body in protest.

He kept his disappointment completely silent, and made a point to not even so much as mention the holiday to Sephiroth. It wasn't fair, but it was less fair to his poor beloved, who would most likely spend the day plowing through the snow instead of plowing... more interesting things.

But even in the shuffle of Sephiroth's busy schedule, and even if Cloud hadn't uttered a word about it, the General did not forget. If there was one thing dating taught him, it was to never, ever, ever forget Valentine's Day.

And how could he forget? Cloud was constantly on his mind.

Cloud found himself alone on the evening of the dreaded holiday, clicking around on Cam's laptop while he was out getting laid like the rest of humanity. There had been a knock at his door, and he opened it to find himself face to face with the typical Valentine's Day bullshit. Roses, a heart shaped box of candy, and a tiny, heartwarming stuffed polar bear. For a fierce second, Cloud thought he'd actually look up and find Sephiroth standing there.

It was only a delivery guy of course, but Cloud couldn't find it in himself to feel disappointed. He had shrieked, delighted with the surprise and restrained himself from gripping the startled deliveryman into a grateful hug. "Is it a singing telegram!?"

The young man shrugged at Cloud. "There's no telegram. And if there was, it wouldn't be a singing one. I don't think...?"

"Are you sure?" Cloud asked suspiciously, grinning as he signed for the delivery, then took his goodies.

"Um... there's a note with the flowers, but..."

"Aww, sing it!" Cloud insisted. "Please?"

The guy looked around uncomfortably, then took the note from Cloud's flowers and opened it. He cleared his throat a little, and snapped his fingers to find a rhythm. Cloud giggled in delight when he began to croon like a lounge singer. "Mimimiii...ahem... 'Hey Baby, what's up? I just thought you should know that today's not Valentine's Day. People might think that it is, but it's not. Valentine's Day is coming late this year for you and me, that's all. So eat all your candy, skinny, I want more of that ass. Kisses from up North.'"

Cloud gave the guy a nice tip for actually carrying a decent tune. Then he obediently gorged himself on the candy and flowers, in true fashion of the lonely victims of the holiday.

Although, Cloud was far from desperate for romantic company. Every single homosexual in the city suddenly wanted nothing more than to take him to bed. He didn't even pretend to think it was his own looks or charms that was attracting the sudden attention; everyone simply wanted to be a step closer to the world-renowned beauty of General Sephiroth.

The academy 'mo's had taken several photographs of he and the General on New Year's. He'd taped them all to the wall next to his bed; one of them chatting with laced fingers by the bar, one of Sephiroth bending down to steal a kiss while dancing, and one of both of them smiling obediently for the camera (Cloud was smiling a bit too widely, and one of Sephiroth's hands were clearly not in the picture, but rather plunged down the back of his jeans).

Cloud had stared at them for a long time in class when Skylar first gave him the printouts that contained he and the General. Cloud had been so happy that night that he looked unrecognizable to himself. And Sephiroth was almost as beautiful on film as he was in person, but a picture barely compared with being next to his height, his heat, and his strong aura. Cloud thought inwardly that the happy, drunk blonde person in the photos, and the taller, long haired beauty looked an awful lot like two people who were madly in love with each other.

And naturally, the blatant evidence of Sephiroth's sexual preferences set off a bomb of intrigue in the gay community.

It was humorous and rather shameless the sort of letters Cloud had begun to receive, many without return addresses in his mailbox, or passed on the sly during his classes. They were mostly hopeful proposals for threesomes with Sephiroth and himself, complete with enticing photos and sexual resumes.

They were generally vile, disgusting, shameless filth. Cloud naturally began reading the more graphic ones to Sephiroth over the phone.

"Jeeesus..." Sephiroth had winced after having been narrated a five page letter from a stranger involving cracked bleeding lips from gagging on the General's huge monster cock, licking literal shit off of his iconic thigh high boots, and upside down fucking underneath statues of Wutai's holy leaders. "Doesn't anyone just wanna make love to me?"

"I do! I do!" Cloud giggled and crumpled the letter into the garbage and went about opening the next one. "But doesn't it pique your interest just a bit, though? You have an entire city of wanton cum sluts at your disposal."

"But you're the only cum slut I want," Sephiroth told him with a chuckle.

Even though it was said with a drop of cheeky sarcasm, and contained the words 'cum' and 'slut' Cloud had to blush a little across the world. It was funny how tender things Sephiroth would say could make Cloud's cheeks pinken, but reading about the explicit carnal desires of strangers didn't even stir his body in the slightest.

The nasty letters were a fun distraction from just how badly Cloud missed his lover, but the novelty quickly wore off. Cloud quit opening them and ignored everything and everyone who wanted to talk about his boyfriend. Cloud was seething with a kindergartner's pride at having the coolest toy and with no intentions to share it. Sephiroth was his! His, his, his! If they wanted him so badly, they should have taken a shot at it before spotting him with a real lover and getting all jealous.

Time to make a CD, Cloud nodded to himself and discretely popped a bud in his ear during math class, put it on shuffle, and began to think about Sephiroth. He found that his Mp3 player was almost like an eight ball when it was on shuffle. Songs that fit what he was feeling always seemed to bubble up the surface.

The first song that screamed Sephiroth was The Birds and the Bees - Breathe Carolina. This song was a powerhouse of how he felt about his lover. The song swore to God that "I won't stop until you're shaking" while having a fun, sexy beat and an out of place screamer. It clearly belonged in the number one spot.

The next to make itself known was No You Girls - Franz Ferdinand. It seemed to be accusing Sephiroth of being a cocktease merely by existing, and also confessed that his sexiness caused extreme stupidity. Well the song said 'girls', but if you merely replaced that word with 'sexy Generals', it spelled out Cloud's befuddled case of chronic sexual frustration perfectly. Besides, he was certain Sephiroth would like the song for the song itself. Cloud smiled and scrawled the song on the number two spot on his notebook paper.

Cloud wrote down the name of the next song, then crossed it out. He listened to it a little longer and wrote it down again. He was certain Sephiroth was going to hate every second of the song, but it spoke to Cloud. Happily Screwed - The Wombats. It talked of the hardships of relationships; the petty trials that made couples stronger, or tore them apart. The song seemed confident that whatever trials did have the nerve to present themselves would be overcame with gusto, and in the end the two of them would be happily screwed. In all contexts, of course.

Out of 5,000 songs, Days Go By - Dirty Vegas came up not once, not twice, but three times in thirty minutes. Cloud almost didn't want to include it because it always sounded like a melancholy breakup song to him, but he finally gave in to God's persistence and gave it a real listen, and realized that it only promised the listener to be thought about, no matter how many days went by. Also, the melancholy could easily be warped into a sexual longing, which was this particular mix CD's subtle theme.

Cloud smiled brightly when Erection by The Faint came up. Yeah, sexual longing was the subtle them, alright. But if he had an anthem to sum up the past two months of his life, that certainly would have to be it. That, coupled with a sexy beat made it a no brainer. He also appreciated the singer's giggly demeanor during the song's breakdown.

And speaking of which, Cloud's erection underneath his desk crossed its arms in stubbornness. It wasn't going anywhere, even as Cloud discretely abused it with his math book. It finally relented just in time for the end of class, and Cloud headed to the drum room, and was greeting by the sounds of angry fighting.

There was nothing quite like a good, loud argument, especially when Cloud wasn't a part of it. Unauthorized fighting on campus was grounds for a write up, but there was no word in the handbook about catapulting objects at one another. He made his way into the room, careful not to be stricken with a chair, drumstick or book. He couldn't help being hit with a pen, wincing as it left a black, slightly painful streak across his cheek. It was a nice-ass pen though, and he quickly snatched it up.

"I'm going!" Stanley roared. "I'm the best drummer, I should be the first to go!"

"Who says you're the best?" Brick argued, pitching more items from his backpack across the room. "My brother's troop is leaving now, and I wanna go with him!"

Renold was throwing things from his neck of the woods, too. "I don't wanna go, Stan! I turn 18 next month! I have too much to live for! Let Brick and Kevin go!"

Kevin was hiding behind a rack of huge, hanging chimes and a lovely accidental melody tinkled as he peeked from behind it. "I don't wanna go! Let Reno and Brick go!"

Cloud felt left out, so he began tossing books into the fray. "Go where!?"

Stanley stood with extreme dignity. "There's a red handkerchief on the door handle. That means someone's being deployed for drummer duty. It should be me and Kevin! But Kevin doesn't want to go, so now these two dickwads think they can take our place! And it's never gonna happen!"

Brick walked up to Stan with every visible intention of decking him. "I'm going."

"No," Stanley said firmly, although he had to crane his neck back to look up at the taller boy. "Me and Reno are going."

Cloud huffed. "Why don't you two just go together? Leave these two chickenshits behind."

Renold and Kevin both seemed delighted with that idea.

Brick shook his head. "We're teamed up this way for a reason. We've already seen battle together, and it worked. We can't change it up, now."

"Well, what about me?" Cloud challenged. "Who am I supposed to go with?"

"You're the alternate. Like John was..." Kevin explained, his voice wavering. "I can't go. I'm gonna forget the tempos. I'm gonna choke and get somebody killed again... Stan, I don't wanna go!"

Everyone in the room paused. Even Cloud become somewhat somber although he never knew John, and didn't know the severity of the trauma.

Renold spoke first. "It wasn't your fault, Kev..."

Kevin shook his head. "It wouldn't have happened if I didn't stop drumming. I choked, and John kept going and..."

Coach Hendrix came out of his office lazily, perpetually seeking his cup of caffeine. "Don't argue anymore. You're all going."

Two fifths of the room broke out into joyously surprised grins. Two fifths grimaced in horror. Cloud gaped like a fish. "Even me?"

The coach sighed, looking more tired than ever. "Everyone's going. I just got orders this morning. They want to end this conflict quickly, and they're finally starting towards battle."

Cloud put a hand over his mouth. The instructors never spoke so frankly about the situation, it was always sugar coated and informationless. Sephiroth never told Cloud anything either, only steered the conversation towards matters of the heart, or things happening in Cloud's life. They were moving towards an actual battle up there. A real, actual fight. Not just military movement. Not just bullshit.

A fight to the death! And he was going to be there for it! Actually involved in it!

Cloud had to go to the bathroom.

"When do we go?" Stanley asked, almost giddy and wrapping his arm around Brick's thick waist, who almost danced alongside him.

"Monday."

The entire room gasped. It was Friday.

"And you aren't going in your usual teams. Everyone goes separately. You'll all meet up at once when you're needed for duty."

Cloud's heart began to pound. He really had to go to the bathroom.

They went through their tempos with utmost seriousness that afternoon, and their last physical class of the day was cancelled in favor of extra practice time. The Coach kept Cloud behind for two hours of extra one on one time, and promised Cloud that if he kept a level head, he'd be perfectly fine.

"So you really think I'll be ready?" Cloud asked quietly.

"Nobody's ever really ready," Coach Hendrix disclosed. "But I wouldn't send you if I thought you'd fail. Too many lives would be at stake, not just yours.

Cloud knew that was a man's manly way of telling another manly man to go get 'em. But he wanted nothing more than for his drum teacher to hold him and tell him he was going to be alright.

Cloud went to his room and found Cam there, already asleep under his covers and snoring alongside Psycho. His poor friend sometimes worked himself to the bone. Cloud decided to tell him the news later.

Instead, he took his cell phone and went into a study room that was vacant, and closed and locked the door. That was against the dorm rules, but it was late and he didn't expect that anyone would give him too much grief about it. He did the mental math and figured out that it was extremely early in the morning on Sephiroth's end. There was a chance he'd already be awake, but it was still an obscene hour... Cloud felt guilty as he dialed.

But he'd already shat his brains out and he couldn't stop his heart from racing, his hands from shaking. He needed to talk to someone who might understand.

It rang several times, and Cloud was about to give up when he finally heard Sephiroth grunt at the other end, "Yeah?"

"I'm coming up there!" Cloud blurted.

"Mm-hm...you... got drum duty," Sephiroth confirmed, snorting in air as he shifted around on his cot. Cloud frowned, because he'd clearly woken Sephiroth up from absolute sleep.

But Cloud had a million things to ask. Was he going to be hurt? Was he going to die? Was he going to fail the drummerboys with his lack of experience? Was he going to see someone he knew die? But the most crucial was, "Can I travel with your squad? Please?"

"Ugh," Sephiroth answered groggily, sounding more impatient than he actually was. "No, there's no place for a drummer with us. But you'll be taken care of, I promise."

Cloud had been strong and firm against complaining about their mutually frustrating situation, but he couldn't help but let a sad, deflated moan slip from between his lips, like the last tragic noise a toy makes before its batteries finally give out. He laid his head against his hand and couldn't find any words to say that didn't speak of profound disappointment, fear, or dread.

Traveling with Sephiroth meant more than kisses or even sex. Safety, reassurance, protection, support. That's what Cloud was hoping for. The drummers weren't allowed to fight under any circumstance. They were dependant on their group for all means of defense. Cloud didn't trust anyone more than Sephiroth.

Sephiroth heard the little sound of angst and sighed, not knowing the full scope of Cloud's motivations. "Baby, it's not that I don't wanna see you, you know I'm dyin' to see you - that's why I'm workin' hard to make it happen. So... don't cry. 'Kay?"

Cloud resented that. "Ugh, I'm not going to cry. I don't expect us to like... fuck like bunnies in your cot every night..." He beat gently on the side of his own head, trying to shake the vision out. "I just wanted to see if you had any room for me, that's all. Because... I would feel safe with you."

Sephiroth had to smile, but did an excellent job of keeping it out of his voice. "It wasn't an easy decision to make, but I know for a fact that you're much safer with another group. Please don't guilt me."

Cloud huffed. "Oh, c'mon! I'm not trying to guilt you...Is it that bad of me that I just wanted to ask?"

Sephiroth softened a bit, and his voice relaxed into sleepiness. "Not at all. I just wanna give you everything you want, and it sucks when I can't. But I promise you you're going to be fine, and it's all gonna be over soon. And when we get home I'm gonna take such good care of you. Promise."

Cloud pouted seductively. "Maybe you love me or something..."

"I know I do," Sephiroth grinned, returning the playful little flirtation. "I can't wait to kiss you, an' touch you, an' have you, an' suck you, an' bite you..." He tsked longingly and sighed a bit. "And it won't be much longer, now."

Cloud was certain that he could have filled a Big Gulp cup with how much he could have came over that statement. He grinned and rocked back in his seat, letting a coo slip out.

Sephiroth wasn't certain what that little squeak meant in Cloud's aural language, yet. "Are you happy or sad right now?"

"So happy!" Cloud gushed.

"My job is done," Sephiroth's voice creaked with a pleasantly bemused sort of exhaustion. "Can I get my 45 more minutes of sleep now?"

"Oh, I suppose," Cloud sighed, and kissed his cell phone. He then said what had become their own little sign-off. "Will you dream about me?"

"You don't know the half of it."

"I love you, love you, love you!" Cloud called before his end of the line went silent and disconnected.

At the Northern Crater, Sephiroth laid there with the phone to his ear long after he'd been hung up on. He was now more awake than asleep, and he had forty minutes left before it was time to be up. No use in even trying to cash in on that.

He sat up, scowling over at Angeal who was sleeping like a big, fat, innocent baby. He wanted to hurl something at him out of sheer wickedness, but instead quietly scooted to the edge of his cot.

He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at his bare feet, a deep, inner shiver settling into his core as the heat from his cot left him. His more wakeful mind assessed the conversation that had just taken place with greater clarity.

Sephiroth smiled a little before scratching his head. I love you. He didn't understand what his own hang-up was. Cloud said it all the time, but now the return phrase had become this thing in Sephiroth's mind. It was like Zack and his half assed drunken proposal. Cloud had told them that all women dream of the magical scenario that their boyfriends finally pop the question.

Sephiroth most fucking certainly was not about to propose some lawless, trite marriage to Cloud, but he knew that when he finally told him that he loved him, it was going to be just as big of a deal. He wished it didn't have to be, but he let it go too long and far, and it had become something else, and he just didn't know how to deal with it.

As soon as we can be face to face, Sephiroth decided. I'm just gonna fuckin' say it already.

These thoughts disintegrated as Sephiroth scratched his scalp again and let his hand fall limply back down between his knees.

He was so tired.

And Angeal just looked so peaceful.

Sephiroth took one of his dirty, black, balled up socks. He shook it straight, then gently tossed it, and snickered silently as it settled right over Angeal's face.

Angeal snorted, then shifted a little before his hand came up to touch the thing over his face curiously. When he realized what it was, he quickly tossed it to the floor and blinked in furious confusion. He found Sephiroth sitting on his cot, grinning at him in the dark like a glowing green demon.

"Oh, very mature," Angeal huffed, before rolling over onto his side.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Since it had been announced that he was to be deployed, Cloud had received summons to just about every academic supervisor in the academy. They all wanted to pat him on the back, to wish him luck, and to bestow fabulous prizes!

One gave him a pair of drumsticks that were apparently thrown in to the crowd at a Beatles concert circa John Lennon. One gave him 500 freaking gil. One approved him a whole week of vacation time for when he was sent back home. One gave him a little hackeysack-sized pack that had a very small, simple fire materia in it, and would be a permanent little source of warmth for Cloud in the tundra - the bonus being that he was actually taught how to use it, quite a big deal for just a first year. Cloud felt like the God of Fire.

He gave them all the cute, wide eyed, small town foreign boy routine, took his loot, and split. Sunday afternoon was then designated as a day for him and Cam to hang out, to mail Sephiroth the mix CD and copies of all the cute snapshots from New Year's, and most importantly, to waste Cloud's money.

But there was one order of serious business. Cloud had been ordered by Coach Hendrix to get a haircut. Apparently, it was some sort of tradition for the SOLDIERs and army to get a haircut before being deployed - something about not looking scraggly for the newspapers upon their return. It made sense, Sephiroth had given no inkling for a desire to cut his hair before his departure, yet he had.

And oh, it had looked so good...

And besides, it had been several months since Cloud had been due for a cut. Well, since he'd shirked getting a cut. His plan for long haired sexiness was backfiring somewhat, because it was growing up. Straight up. He looked like an unkempt blonde mix between Zack and the closet-fag vampire from Twilight.

The best he could do was to seize the longer spikes and pull them back into a ponytail, but it just didn't look as cool as it did on Cam, so he decided to use some of his money on a ridiculously priced hair dresser. He went into a mostly empty salon that was clearly meant for like-minded women and the discerning sort of male. There were two stylists on duty; a heavyset lady with fire engine red hair, and a seriously gay man sporting a Flock of Seagulls hairdon't.

Cloud was relieved when the lady approached him and took him under her wing.

"What is it you want done?" she asked as she settled him into the chair. It surprised Cloud, because the first thing a barber usually had done was to stick his head under water, demanding to know why he'd shown up for a haircut with a head full of gel and hairspray. The lady could obviously tell a lack of product when she saw it.

"Please help me," Cloud begged of her. "Whenever I get haircuts, it always turns out so... boxy. They always cut the back way too short, and leave me with one big stupid spike in the middle. I end up looking like a unicorn. For once I'd like for it to be sort of..." His hands went everywhere; he couldn't explain what he wanted.

"I have a vision," she said, rubbing Cloud's temple in gentle circles.

His hands fell back into his lap and his eyes crossed a little bit and fluttered. "Wh-what...?"

Cam snickered from his perch on the next chair.

"I don't speak my visions in words," was all she said before going to work, snipping and razoring Cloud's hair. After she fell into a groove, she asked, "Why would you want to cut this beautiful blonde hair?"

Cloud decided to get some practice breaking the news to his own mother. He still hadn't called her to tell her what was happening. Frankly, he was terrified to. "Well, I'm a drum cadet at the Shin-Ra academy. And... I'm being sent up to the Northern Crater tomorrow afternoon."

The lady paused in snipping his hair. "So is my son."

Cloud's eyes glanced up to her, and saw a look of blatant worry on her face. And her fire engine red hair. "...No fucking way."

"Way," she sighed. "You probably know Reno."

Cloud hadn't been exactly invited to call Renold by his shortened name, so he never had. "...Yeah, he's in my drum class. I'm Cloud."

"He's talked about you," she said absently, setting into work on the back of his head.

Cloud was somewhat surprised by that, but tried not to let it show. He knew mothers didn't always understand why every boy in school wasn't a best friend with every other boy. Frankly, Reno tended to get on his nerves with his manic and sometimes dangerous energy, and Cloud didn't see any use in getting to know him, as he was in the Junior Turk program and graduating at the year's end. For the sake of his hair, he decided to just smile into the mirror at her and let her think what she wanted.

She shook her head and began to tug on Cloud's hair a little bit as she cut it. "He's been sent out before. I can look forward to a few weeks of sleepless nights, that's for sure," She then looked over at Cam. "Don't tell me you're being sent up, too?"

"No, not me," Cam denied respectfully.

"Well thank God for that," she tsked at him.

Cloud's eyebrows turned up. "You shouldn't worry... we're gonna all be taken care of. And we'll come back before you know it."

"That's what they say," she fretted, pulling a bit harder on Cloud's hair. "But it don't stop a mother from just about dying of fear in the meantime."

Cloud frowned and could think of nothing to say. His mind was slowly settling into a difficult decision.

He wasn't going to tell his mother.

She caught his sad expression in the mirror. "Don't be scared; you're right. It's just the mother in me, I hate seeing such young boys sent to do work they should have a SOLDIER doing."

When she was finished, it was much like how it looked longer, only... shorter. This was extremely exciting for Cloud, who was happy to not have that one stupid vertical, stumpy spike and the back of his head heavily buzzed into submission. She had razored and worked it into several soft, manageable spikes, and had gently buzzed the hair off of his neck into a natural gradient, instead of a lame straight line.

Cloud blushed when Reno's mother wouldn't allow him to pay her. "Not even a tip?"

"No way," she said firmly. "It's bad luck to charge a cutie pie for a haircut."

Cloud didn't know what to say, he stood there just about ready to cry. He didn't care about getting a ridiculously good hair creation for free, it was the warm intent behind it. He'd wanted someone to just hold him since he found out he was being sent up. But there was no one.

Cloud suddenly missed his mom. He missed his mom terribly. She'd probably give him a smack on the head for the hell of it, but she was always hugging him, always putting an arm around him while they watched TV on the couch, always tugging his hair or kissing his cheeks.

Cloud was the sort of person who needed reassuring physical contact, even if he batted it away at times. So when Reno's mom put one of her short, thick arms around his shoulders, he hooked his arm around her chubby waist for a light, casual, but much needed hug. "You watch Reno, okay? You make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. I'm his mom so I'm not supposed to admit it, but I raised one dumb kid."

Cloud smiled and nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"Come back for another haircut in eight weeks. Don't come in twelve weeks when you look like a Chia pet, again."

Once they left the salon, Cloud couldn't help but strut along, rubbing his fingers through the fun texture on the back of his head. He needed to air his mind out, and the slowly warming weather was doing a fabulous job of that.

"Where to now?" Cam asked, reaching out to feel the texture of Cloud's hair for himself.

Blue eyes slitted with pleasure. He still had 500 gil. He could think of no better way to air his mind out than retail therapy - and something cute and expensive to come home to after drum duty. "I wanna go to the mall! The plate mall!"

"You're such a goddamn chick," Cam complained, but didn't argue. It was Cloud's day, after all.

So to the upscale mall they went, and Cloud fogged up the windows of all the major designer stores, not daring to go into most of them because of his lack of fabulosity. His current outfit had consisted of a two gil pair of girl's jeans from Nibelheim, and a costless black pinstripe shirt with white buttons from Sephiroth's closet, that hit him just above mid-thigh. He hadn't exactly given it to him, but Cloud was playing dress up in his clothes and noticed that it smelled strongly of his lover, complete with deodorant marks on the inside armpits. Sephiroth had apparently hung it back up dirty, probably because it didn't stink.

It made Cloud laugh, and he took it for nighttime sniffing purposes.

So he didn't look awful, but he didn't feel right stomping around a shop with priceless gowns, jewels, and handbags that were made from unicorn feathers and the tears of angels. But there was one store in particular that he couldn't help tiptoe over the threshold of.

"Welcome to Gucci," the girl behind the counter purred in some unknown accent.

Cloud blushed and nodded, mumbling a small greeting. Cam was unfazed, and began to make his way casually over to the men's clothes. Cloud grabbed his hand and skulked his way back to the clearance rack, surely the only items he'd be able to afford, if any.

"Two hundred gil fer a fuckin' tie?" Cam squawked immediately. "A fuckin' ugly tie!?"

"Shoosh! Don't mention the prices! They will kill you..." Cloud whispered, giving meaningful head nod towards the statue-esque woman behind the counter, who was not paying them a bit of attention.

Cam gave Cloud a dry look. "Go ahead an' look, den. I won't offend da fuckin' queer gods or whatever tha fuck."

Cloud hastily thumbed through the rack, until his heart just about stopped in his chest. "They're amazing! And my size! And affordable!"

Cam looked over his shoulder. Affordable apparently meant 475 gil. It was criminal, but he wanted to get the hell out of the mall, so he unceremoniously ripped them off the rack and pushed Cloud towards the dressing room. "They're so you. Try 'em an' buy 'em an' let's get tha fuck outta here."

Cloud strutted out of the Gucci store with a new pair of red skinny jeans with black leather racing strips down the sides. "Gucci!" he'd say, lifting up Sephiroth's shirt and pointing at the large label adorning his ass. Cam rolled his eyes when Cloud stopped to needlessly tie his shoes, sticking his little rump up into the air for all the world to see.

They stopped for some lunch, and then hit the post office to send Sephiroth his little parcel. Later that evening while he was preparing to leave, and Cam was hulking out in the gym, he received a knock on his door. He answered it to discover a uniformed messenger from the Shin-Ra building.

"Cloud Strife?" he assumed.

Cloud nodded. "Yes."

"Vice President Shin-Ra requests an audience with you immediately."

Rufus wanted to see him? What the hell for?

Cloud followed the guy curiously to the parking lot. Rufus had sent a limo for him. A limo! For a two-block distance! He was slightly embarrassed, but got in anyways, and immediately noticed the tiny refrigerator. Before the driver even got the keys in the ignition, Cloud was already mixing himself a Vodka and Red Bull.

He downed it and thanked the driver with a wide smile as he exited. At the door, there was another underling of Rufus' was waiting to escort him to his office, which required a few keycard strokes. He was patted down by a security guard, but thankfully much less invasively than at the medical labs. Finally, Cloud was let into Rufus' high class, amazingly tasteful inner sanctum, and found his gay patron saint sitting behind his desk and reading People magazine.

Cloud's eyes moved around the room, and couldn't help but notice that the ceiling was mirrored. He wondered if Sephiroth had designed the place.

Rufus lazily said, "We'd like to be alone."

The man servant that had led Cloud to the office fucking bowed and left, followed by a couple of Turks who were draped over the white leather couch in the sitting area and sipping martinis. They took their drinks with them and closed the door, leaving silence behind them.

Cloud tapped his fingers against his jeans, and took a few steps towards Rufus. "Hi, what's up?"

"Same shit, different day," Rufus sighed, and folded his magazine and slapped it on the table. "You're being sent to the Northern Crater, I hear. Very brave boy."

Cloud shrugged one shoulder with a smile.

Rufus narrowed his eyes and rested his cheek against his hand. "Well, since you're going, there's something I want to give you."

Oh shit! Cloud laced his fingers behind his back nervously. What the hell was Rufus going to give him? A sack of cash? A car? An island off the coast and a lifetime supply of lube? Ten minutes to run around the mall and grab whatever he wanted, like Supermarket Sweep?

I'll spend five minutes in Gucci, Cloud decided. Then the rest of the time in Dior. No, Diesel. Just get the purple vest and the white boots from Dior, then two minutes in Deisel, then the rest of the time in Marc Jacobs. Yeah!

Rufus opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small, pink envelope. "This is a letter for Genesis Rhapsodos. I can't mail things like other people can. Everything is heavily monitored. And I can't send it under a false name, because then Gen won't open it. And you're the most inconsequential person that I've ever associated with, so I feel I can trust your care."

Cloud's mouth became a line, and he sighed and reached out for it. "Sure, whatever."

Rufus held it out, but didn't release it immediately. "...I'd be very grateful."

Cloud's features softened and opened up, and he nodded. "I'll give it to him. I promise."

Rufus snatched it back, licked the envelope and sealed it with deliberate diligence. "No peeking at it."

Cloud gave Rufus a small, cheeky smile. "I'm not interested in anything you two queens have to say to each other."

"Little bitch! Go find Genesis. And try not to get yourself blown apart in the process," Rufus tossed the letter to Cloud, then picked his magazine back up.

Cloud laughed a little and made his way out. He sniffed the envelope curiously, finding that Rufus must have spritzed it heavily with his cologne.

"By the way..." Rufus called just as his hand was on the door. "Did you and the General enjoy the opera, yet?"

Cloud froze with Genesis's love letter against his nose. They hadn't given the tickets to Zack and Aerith yet, but they certainly had no intentions of using them themselves. "Ummm... He actually left before we were able to go. When he gets back... we will...?"

Rufus nodded behind his magazine. "Be sure you do. It's a total bore, but a great place to fuck. Toodles."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was nervous about meeting his SOLDIER party. He wondered if they viewed the drummer boys as a burden, and decided that they most certainly did. They were trained war veterans, and escorting around a cadet must have been a terribly obnoxious task.

He only hoped that they wouldn't be mean to him. If the men of his career path didn't accept him, he would surely wither and die. More importantly, if they weren't friendly people Cloud would have a very difficult time getting them to take him to the General, which was a major objective.

In blank white honesty, the only acceptable form of physical communication he'd be allowed to give Sephiroth would be a salute. But would Sephiroth let it end there? Could Sephiroth actually lay eyes on him again after two months, and let him pass by with only a salute?

Cloud fidgeted beside Kevin at the terminal. Reno, Stanley and Brick's flights had already departed. The sounds of airships landing and taking off were making Cloud's stomach ache with anxiety, and frankly, he was out of poop.

He turned to Kevin, the little antisocial shorty. "Do you think they'll like us?"

"So what if they don't?"

"Did you get along well with them last time you had duty?"

"They'll hardly notice you, don't worry." Kevin looked slightly pale and extremely small. For Cloud to call another creature small, that was saying something. Then he remembered what exactly had happened to Kevin the last time he had duty.

Cloud could have kicked himself for his insensitivity. But instead he changed the subject. "So how long do you think it'll be before we see each other out there?"

Kevin checked the wall clock then slowly lifted himself up and strapped on his bags. "I'm not sure," He turned to leave and Cloud figured that was that, but then the guy turned back to him. "You're good people, Strife. Best of luck."

Cloud had no idea what that might have meant. He stood and strapped on his own bags, and headed to the opposite airship hall. He turned the corner, and saw a sight that made a large grin break out onto his face.

"Hey kiddo!" Zack said, approaching him and throwing an arm around his shoulder.

"You smoke now?" Cloud laughed, flicking the end of the cigarette between Zack's lips.

"They remind me of Aer-head."

Cloud laughed. "You think she's chugging liquor since you're gone?"

"She should if she isn't," Zack took one last puff off the cigarette before he stomped it with his combat boot. "Ready to go to the North Pole?"

Cloud gasped in delight. "You're taking me?"

"Of course I am!" Zack laughed. "You think Seph would have it any other way?"

Cloud blushed and shook his head. "I guess not..."

Zack knocked on the top of his head incredulously. "Get on the ship and stow your crap. They're gassing it up, and I'm gonna grab something real to eat. Want me to bring you back anything?"

Cloud rubbed his stomach. "Nah, I ate just now."

Zack hiked an eyebrow. "What did you eat?"

"A chocobo salad."

Zack looked at him with blatant disappointment. "You're gonna be regretting that choice as your last meal, dude. Anyways, I gotta bust a move. Save me a seat!"

Cloud grinned, "Okay!"

Zack broke out at a run towards the mess hall. Cloud gulped as he exited out the automatic doors and saw the airship that had come to fetch him sitting there, it's propellers turning slowly and several pit workers running to and fro, cleaning the windows, tightening bolts, filling the gas tank. Cloud only hoped some homicidal fuck didn't unscrew some particular bolt that would make the ship rattle apart in mid-flight.

He decided to not think about that, and instead uneasily boarded. It was much smaller inside than it was outside, everything was metal, industrial, and uncomfortable. There were three rows of seats in aisles of three, and Cloud slid his bags off and stored them in a compartment behind them.

It was a difficult decision, but Cloud chose a window seat. He then popped a motion sickness pill and strapped himself in.

It didn't take long for Zack to come lumbering onto the ship. He left a seat between him and Cloud and threw a full size bag of ruffled chips at him. "You'll thank me later."

Cloud smiled and set it on the floor by his feet. The door was then shut and locked, and then the entire metal airship began to rumble and vibrate. He'd never been on a plane, helicopter, or airship and he wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea to begin with. But this horrifying shaking? He was about to jump out of the window, Northern Crater assignment or not.

Zack noticed Cloud bristle. "Hey, this is totally normal."

"Does it do this the entire time?" Cloud moaned, holding onto his seat belt for dear life.

"No, it'll smooth out soon. It'll feel like being on a boat."

"A boat!?" Cloud balked, covering his mouth.

"Oooh, ah... Look, just chill...um..." Zack seemed to be searching for something to give Cloud to calm him down. Then he simply offered his hand. Cloud didn't hesitate to grab it and squeeze.

Cloud watched as the ground became farther away, buildings became small squares, and Midgar was left in the distance. Then it was all patchwork fields and dips and rises of mountains.

Cloud eventually let Zack's hand go.

"You gonna hurl? Seph said you might hurl."

"No," Cloud decided after considering the option. "I took some medicine. I think I'll be okay."

"Good," Zack said firmly, and laced his hands behind his head.

Cloud turned to him in the seat, away from the window when clouds began to puff past the ship. "How's Seph?"

"He's fine. You don't talk to him?"

"Yeah, but it's easy to say you're fine on the phone. Is he okay? Like, really okay?"

"He's fine."

Cloud finally just asked. "Think we might run into him?"

Zack smiled, and closed his eyes. "Now that is a secret."

Cloud gasped shrilly. "Really!? What kind of secret? The kind where he's waiting for us at the landing site? Or the kind where he's actually the pilot of this ship? Or the kind where the battle's actually over and we're truly headed to Costa del Sol where we'll live on Margaritas? Or the kind that might take a little longer? Zack? Zack!"

Apparently, Cloud's melodic, accented prattle had put the dark headed SOLDIER to sleep. "...Wha?"

Cloud whined, "When will I see Seph?"

"I told you already, it's a secret."

"We shouldn't have any secrets between us, Zack."

"Nice try," Zack smiled and ruffled his hair. "I recommend you get some sleep. We've got an eight hour ride, but it's gonna be early morning when we get there. Pretend it's the middle of the night, right now."

Cloud finally nodded in understanding and tried to sink into his uncomfortable and completely vertical backrest. He was nervous and excited and vaguely airsick, but the lure of extra sleep wasn't too hard to indulge in.

He closed his eyes and as was natural for a young man his age, he immediately began to think about sex. He had managed to pop himself off three times in the shower right before the flight, but that was meaningless when confronted with thoughts and memories regarding his boyfriend. It wouldn't have been so bad if Zack hadn't picked him up. If it had been some unknown SOLDIER, Cloud would have remained professional in his thoughts, but there was a chance, now. A good chance... that someone amazing might be waiting for him when the ship landed...

Maybe...maybe... He smiled beneath closed eyes, laid his head against the window, tucked his knees up underneath his chin, and let his mind drift until his consciousness disconnected.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was woken up by the noise of his own teeth chattering inside his mouth. He was paralyzed, and stuck in a state of sleepy confusion and horrible discomfort. Finally, he let out a booming verbal shiver.

Zack jolted awake beside him. "Cloud? What?"

"It's so fucking cold!" Cloud hissed loudly, curling tighter in on himself on the seat. "Is something wrong with the plane?"

Zack rubbed his face. "No. This is generally what happens when you travel north."

Cloud was shaking uncontrollably. "But this is like, the cold of insanity! This is how cold hell would be if hell were cold instead of hot!"

Zack tried to make sense of that, but gave up. "What are you complaining for? You're supposed to be a big time mountain boy!" Cloud narrowed his eyes and seized Zack's neck with one of his freezing hands. "Ew! Are you alive? Put some more clothes on or something!"

Cloud uncurled himself from his seat and passed Zack to his gear. He pulled out an armful of clothes and shivered his way into the ship's tiny bathroom.

He dreaded it, but he had to strip himself naked. He couldn't help but look morbidly down at his genitals to see how misshapen and miniscule they had become. The whole situation seemed to be frowning up at him.

So, he reached into the bag to retrieve something that was standard issue and the most unsexy, horrible item of clothing on the face of the Earth, and disgustingly reminiscent of his dreary childhood. With a grimace, Cloud pulled long johns up onto his body. The white, starchy thermal kind.

The kind he snuck out to the kitchen to steal cookies in. The kind he always got piss all over when he hadn't yet learned how to aim his stream. The kind that his mother insisted he wear to school underneath his trousers in the winter, all the better for the bullies to wedgie him with.

Cloud had a long, torrid history with long johns, and when he reached an age where his mouth could rival his mother's, he swore them off for good. She told him he could freeze his balls off if he wanted to, and he declared that he'd be happy to rather than wear the unbecoming garment.

But this was a kind of cold that made skin crack and noses bleed. And it wouldn't be a quick blast of chill between travel from heated buildings. It was to be a constant state of cold. They were hideous, but necessary. If Sephiroth could pull off that leering stare when he was met face to face with an ass covered in ill fitting, gross thermal underwear, then Cloud figured their love was definitely everlasting.

Cloud tucked the long johns into thick socks, then pulled up his fatigues and added a thick, long sleeve black thermal shirt beneath his uniform top. He finished buttoning his clothes and retied his boots, then looked at himself in the mirror. He thought his school uniform looked strange without his tie, like he was going to be sent back to his room to put it on if he stepped out of the bathroom without it. He thought it was a little ridiculous that even in the harshest conditions, Shin-Ra always wanted the army in their strictest uniform. The SOLDIERs suffered their sleeveless shirts in the snow. Although, with their physiques, they could handle it.

For his uniform however, he was expected to look like a school kid, as drummerboys traditionally were always cadets. His school uniform would make him stand out, but Cloud had brought up the concern that maybe he shouldn't be standing out in the middle of a battlefield.

The headmaster and Coach Hendrix had both promised Cloud in his briefing that drummerboys were not targets on a battlefield.

Their drums were.

So, it was a triple thick Kevlar vest over their uniform shirts. Coach Hendrix and the Headmaster had argued briefly in front of Cloud and the other drummerboys as to whether or not they should wear the vest 100 percent of the time, or just for battles. It was decided that slipping it on before battles would be appropriate, as long as they remembered to tuck their shirts in.

Fucking ridiculous.

The rest of Cloud's gear contained one extra uniform, one blanket, one sleeping bag, and one cadet-issue pop tent. This all weighed approximately twenty pounds. The other eighty pounds in his gear were his drum, extra sticks, his backpack speaker, a solar charger, extra battery packs, and electrical wiring. There had been a big to do concerning the fact that Cloud weighed only 20 pounds more than the load he was expected to carry.

"Let's all wait a minute while you try out your gear, Cloud," Coach Hendrix had suggested. "Just to make sure you can lift it all without hurting yourself."

How embarrassing!

"I happen to be very ant-like," Cloud had informed them all, and demonstrated by strapping on and trotting around with all one hundred pounds of gear secure.

"Are you gonna be able to carry that for days at a time?" Renold had inquired, arms crossed in doubt.

Cloud gauged the weight swaying from one foot to the other. "I don't see why not."

Renold was still not convinced. "If you don't think you can, you might as well - "

"Look, Kevin can carry it, right? If Kevin can carry it, I can carry it!"

Renold of course refused to shut his mouth. "I'm not tryin' to be a dick, I just don't wanna have to drag your ass through the snow when you break it - "

Cloud made a large, irritated noise. "Just put a sock in it already, Renold!"

Reno blinked at him, and his face turned as red as his hair. "Don't call me that, asshole!"

"You're driving me crazy!"

"Your accent is drivin' me crazy! How's anyone supposed to understand a word you say?"

"Understand this!" Cloud roared, and sent up both of his middle fingers.

"I'ma break those fuckin' fingers off!" Reno cawed, and he dove onto Cloud, gear and all.

Laden with items, the teenagers dragged each other across the floor. Reno got Cloud into a sloppy headlock. He punched Reno in the stomach, and received an elbow onto the top of his head. He then got a hold of the redhead's skinny neck and squeezed, all intentions of wringing the life out of him.

The Headmaster, Coach Hendrix, Stanley, Kevin, and Brick all watched placidly.

Panting heavily, they both wound down until they just laid there. Reno slowly unhooked his arm from around Cloud's neck, and he sat up, rubbing his throat and coughing a little. Cloud carefully sat up and stood, going back to line up with the other drummers.

"How's the weight feel now, Cloud?" The Headmaster asked.

Cloud had wheezed. "No problem..."

He looked at himself in the mirror. Tie-less, freezing, and generally tiny in all aspects.

Well, except one...

Tripod. It was enough to bring a sunny smile out onto his face.

The only other piece of his drummerboy uniform left to put on was his beret. He'd been putting off figuring out how to have the thing on his head with the nature of his hair, which tended to slowly but surely push hats up off of his head. He tucked a few of the stronger spikes beneath it, and adjusted his hair around it. The tighter edge of the beret held it in place against the force of his hair. It'd be a chore to put on daily, and he'd have to do periodic checks, but he did think it looked somewhat militant and cute.

As for his schoolwork, he was expected to keep up with it, which he felt was false advertising since the other drummerboys said they'd be excused. But apparently with the situation the way it was currently, they said Cloud was about to have a lot of time on his hands. And with his spotless academic record, the Headmaster was certain it'd be no problem for a cadet as bright and studious as Cloud Strife.

Cloud's soul had frowned. Straight A's had gotten him fucked in the good way, and were now getting him fucked in the bad way. It was new territory for him to actually have academic expectations of him. Usually teachers gave him a pat on the back for turning in complete assignments, right or wrong answers.

So, they made photocopies of his books for the next five weeks worth of chapters, and several papers and assignments to be completed during his downtime. It was going to be his plan to bring only pens with him so they could freeze up and thus excuse him from work, but the Headmaster himself have him a pencil with the academy logo stamped all over it like it was some sort of parting gift. Thanks for nothing, chief.

Cloud emerged from the bathroom to find Zack already fast asleep again.

"We're landing in fifteen minutes," the sleepy-sounding pilot called from the front when he heard Cloud rustling around.

"Can I watch?" Cloud asked, standing near the tiny room full of gadgets like a vampire waiting to be invited in.

The pilot took a bag off the empty co-pilot's seat invitationaly, so Cloud carefully sat down and looked in awe out the window. There was nothing but stark white. The sky was white, the clouds were white, and the ground was white. In fact, he couldn't tell where the sky ended and the ground began.

The color white terrified Cloud suddenly. It was like traveling into nothingness, and somehow that was far more disturbing than traveling into darkness. Darkness suggested things hidden by lack of light. Nothing in broad daylight was... absolutely nothing.  
Finally, at the edge of the colorless oblivion, a slightly higher range of white mountains barely stood out from the monotony of the rest of the environment. The plane began to descend quickly, and straight down. Cloud inwardly panicked. The calm pilot went by a screen that showed their ship as a blip, and the ground level as a flat line. They slowed as the blip came near the flat line, and just as it hit the line and turned green, they settled easily onto the ground.

Cloud let out a woosh of relief, and touched the pilot's shoulder in a silent but somewhat necessary thank you, and quickly loaded up his things onto his body. Zack was moving around slowly and grumpily, but Cloud pranced in circles until the pilot opened the door.

He thought the initial blast of cold air would destroy him. It didn't matter though! There was a possibility that a human heater was waiting for him, and a little cold wind wasn't going to stop him from finding out.

He skipped out onto the snow and peered around at what there was to see. Outside, there was a little society of dwellings that appeared to be more substantial than a tent, but less permanent than a cabin. Cloud smiled, remembering Sephiroth's less than thrilled reaction to them, and then searched the entire area with his eyes for black leather or silver hair.

The SOLDIERs at the camp weren't fazed by their arrival. Some continued to play cards. One poked his head out of one of the igloo-cabins, and then yawned and went back inside.

Sephiroth was nowhere to be seen. Cloud slumped slightly, but then thought that maybe he was butt naked and waiting inside one of those little tent-thingies. He turned back to the ship to catch Zack stumbling out of it, crossing his arms a little bit against the cold.

"Zack... is he here?" Cloud asked him earnestly.

"What does the word 'surprise' mean to you?" Zack yawned, then waved back to the ship before it rumbled and then departed.

Cloud waved also, and then whined to Zack. "I don't wanna be surprised, I wanna know now!"

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, but I'm spoiling everything... I dunno."

Cloud gasped in pure horror. "What? Why did you say there was a surprise!?"

"It's not like I lied. Next time we run into Seph, it'll be a surprise for me, too."

Cloud seethed. "Why didn't you just say that!?"

"If I told you Seph was nowhere around, I'd have a sad midget to sit next to for eight hours on a plane. Nobody wants to sit next to a sad midget." Zack couldn't help himself; he laughed right in Cloud's bewildered, angry little face.

"You're so mean! I hate you!" Cloud declared, and trotted angrily off into the camp of SOLDIERs.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next two weeks were nothing but sitting in the snow and waiting.

The first night was terrible and sleepless. He bundled up in his little tent, with his little sleeping bag, with his little scratchy blanket and sobbed from the sheer cold. Tearlessly of course, since it was too cold to even produce tears. The mini heating bag was useless against negative double digit temperatures, so he ended up just putting it in his pants.

The second night, he was donated an extra blanket from two other SOLDIERs, who apparently were a couple. Cloud thanked them graciously, but inwardly scowled. Must have been nice to have been able to generate some extra body heat together.

The SOLDIERs were kind to Cloud, especially upon discovering that he was the one the General was dating, and often spoke so fondly of. Cloud had Zack to talk to, and forgave him for his childish cruelty almost within the first hour of landing, because Zack was Zack. Max, Sephiroth's Halloween impersonator was in their squad as well. It had taken a great deal of blushed, frantic denials from Cloud to convince him they hadn't left for some hasty sex the evening of the Halloween party.

"We did not!" Cloud had screeched over the campfire.

"You totally did!" Max insisted. "Why deny it?"

"Because it's not true! It was our first date, we're not sluts!"

"Then where did you hurry off to?" Max asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

"We saw a movie!" Cloud stated truthfully, then crossed his arms. "Then he took me home like a gentleman!"

Zack grinned and turned his marshmallow on the fire. "I believe Cloud. Seph showed up for work that morning with the worst case of blue balls I've ever seen."

Cloud gasped in delight. "Really!?"

To pass the time, the SOLDIERs played boyish games in the snow that they called training. Cloud knew dodge ball when he saw it, though. He was never allowed to actively participate, because the SOLDIERs didn't want to hurt him, and frankly, he didn't want to be pummeled by them either. So he sat on the sidelines, cheering and keeping score while doing on his schoolwork, and acting as a sort of referee.

But really, it was completely entertaining just to watch them; the things they could do were amazing. Cloud felt like he was watching human animals, uncaged and free. They surely couldn't play so roughly in Midgar, but here they were allowed to show off and run wild, giddy to exhibit their skills to a set of young, awed eyes. They were like fleas, and he never got used to how high they could jump into the air, especially with a running start. He saw cuts heal together before his eyes, he saw them melt snow into water with a thought, into boiling water if they thought a little harder about it.

They did allow Cloud to join them on their morning run. He also began a yoga regime with a young, slender, ashy haired SOLDIER named Davie, who told him that stretching would assure that his muscles didn't seize up due to the cold. Cloud thought that it was a clever excuse to have a yoga buddy, since the other SOLDIERs seemed to want nothing to do with it. In exchange for an hour a day of yoga, Cloud begged Davie to help him target his abs, which he was happy to do.

Other than that, Cloud volunteered himself for kitchen patrol out of sheer boredom. It was his job to heat up and serve the rations, which the SOLDIERs were all sick of. Cloud discovered that if the morning breakfast bars were all compiled into one pot, heated and stirred with some powdered milk and water, it made a fairly tasty, hot oatmeal concoction. It was a risky experiment, since their food was carefully rationed, but the SOLDIERs were so grateful to actually have a different food on the menu that they didn't care that a day's breakfast might have been ruined and ultimately thrown out.

For lunch, Cloud would cut up and arrange their small ration of vegetable substitute, which was a sort of juicy, squishy substance that reminded Cloud of gelatinous V-8. He would arrange it prettily in each SOLDIER's canteen bowl, and heat up some alphabet soup.

For dinner it was their camp stew, but usually the SOLDIERs would bring back some monstrous animal to eat, which Cloud refused to touch until it looked more like a hamburger and less like a dinosaur. There was an older SOLDIER named Guy, who was likely an excellent father and enjoyed barbequing and creating delicacies out of dead creatures. Often he would drop extra meat into Cloud's bowl, saying something like, "Try that son, that's the face!"

This was all they had to do.

As non-important as his days seemed, Cloud found he rarely had much free time to sit and dwell on his longing for Sephiroth, except alone at night in his sleeping bag. And even then, the thoughts were rarely sexual in nature.

It was so dark at the Northern Crater at night. It was a thick, lightless dark that was like a negative slide of the blindingly bright a pure white days.

The dark didn't normally scare Cloud much, but it did at the Northern Crater. The threats in that darkness weren't imaginary. Anything from a monster, to a terrorist could tear Cloud from this existence forever. So, he thought of Sephiroth in the pitch black, only to give him courage enough to close his eyes and relax enough for sleep.

Sephiroth was a man who'd slept in this darkness without fear. He thought about how to eliminate his threats, not hide from them. Even though his training was well underway, Cloud still held mostly flight instincts. This darkness made him want to cringe and seek refuge underneath his blankets, not puff out and kick ass.

He was supposed to be a man, but didn't have enough confidence to leave his tent to take a leak instead of holding it until morning. For these reasons, Cloud found that he wasn't very much interested in any sort of sexual fantasizing or masturbation. His own insecurity turned him off.

Plus, he was wearing long johns.

On yet another bright, white day, Cloud and the others returned from their morning run to find their camp half packed and buzzing with activity.

"What's happening?" Cloud panted down at Zack, who was stirring a pot of Cloud's oatmeal recipe.

"We are moving out!" Zack called, and was answered by a round of happy cheers. "We're gonna head West and meet up with twelve other squads, and await further instruction."

Before Cloud could even asked, Zack grinned and gave him a bowl of oatmeal. "It'll be a surprise."

Cloud quickly ate his breakfast, then packed up his tent and gathered his gear. Since he had a relatively small amount to carry in comparison to the others, he also packed up the little kitchen and fireside area, and covered the evidence of their stay with snow.

They spent that entire day marching, unpacked for the night, then spent the next day marching as well. It was uneventful at best, and Cloud thought that perhaps if he died and was sent to hell, this surely would have been it for him. No beginning, no end, no talking, just marching, marching, marching...

He couldn't even gaze at their cute SOLDIER asses, since they were so laden with gear and weapons. It was a disgusting situation, and by the middle of the third day, Cloud felt like a zombie.

When a clusterfuck of demons came out of nowhere, Cloud marched right up onto Zack's heels before he realized they were stopped. He peeked around Zack to find that demons were just as monstrous and horrifying as Cloud imagined they might be. Thick, poisonous gasses seemed to seep out of their pores, venom dripped from their razor sharp teeth, and claws flashed menacingly. They outnumbered the SOLDIERs three to one.

The men all reacted immediately and without any sort of hesitation or fear, but Cloud gasped and stepped back with terrified, wide eyes.

"Zack?!" Cloud called, his arms lifting a little, almost as if he expected someone to stop fighting pick him up like a child.

Zack was busy, but called easily over his shoulder. "It's alright, Cloud. Go hang out behind those trees, 'kay?"

If Zack had known that Cloud was completely and utterly unschooled in creature combat, he might have mentioned that he should have walked away calmly. However, Cloud departed like his ass had caught fire. Unfortunately, running away from a clusterfuck of demons was definitely not the thing to do.

A smaller demon left the pack and went buzzing after him through the air. Cloud shrieked gutturally and dove into the snow before it could knock him off his feet. He sat up and looked at the little thing, which blinked all of its eighty eyes at him, one by one. The effect made him nauseous and slightly sleepy, before he shook his head to snap out of the trance before it took a stronger hold of him.

He struggled to his feet and screamed when the demon snapped its' jaws at him. He didn't have any weapons at all. He had his tent and sleeping bag, his drum, his drumsticks, his speaker, his little heat sack and an army knife. He went through his inventory in his mind, trying to think of anything that might make a good offence, when the demon attacked. It scratched at Cloud, who was quick enough to hop back away from it.

Having no other options, Cloud took his tent off of his back, and swung it by the straps. The demon was clocked heavily upside its bulbous head, and fell down into the snow. While it was still stunned, Cloud began to kick the hell out of it, stomping on its head until it split open and the creature stopped breathing. He was panting, before realizing he had a very proud-looking audience.

"Look!" Davie said adoringly. "Cloud got the baby!"

Cloud breathed hard through his nose. "Baby!? This is a baby!?"

He looked back at the corpse, and with a certain degree of disappointment, the thing had shriveled slightly upon its' death, much like a swatted insect. It looked rather unimpressive.

Zack patted Cloud solidly on the back. "Did it getcha?"

"No!" Cloud denied, puffing out.

The SOLDIERs were not fooled, but allowed that to slip. You'd have to have been on the other side of the Earth not to have heard Cloud screaming when the thing approached him. Besides, they didn't have the heart to inform Cloud that baby demons didn't have their venom yet... let alone actual claws.

Zack smiled. "Well, did you get anything?"

"What do you mean?"

"Check the body. You might have something, there."

Cloud approached the demon carefully, not touching it and not seeing anything of worth. "Um?"

Zack and the rest of the SOLDIERs laughed warmly as though they were watching an infant take his first clumsy steps. "You have to cut it open."

"I don't wanna cut it open!" Cloud gawked.

Zack didn't try to hide his mirth. "There's probably something cool inside it! Cut it open and check it out, it's not that hard!"

"It's like a piñata," Max supplied.

"Why would there be something inside it?" Cloud asked suspiciously, as though the thing might erupt with springs or something upon opening it like a joke can of peanut brittle.

"You gotta get through the clothes to get to the meat, right? When they eat people, they swallow everything."

Cloud paled. "It could have eaten me?"

Zack pinched his nose in bemusement. "No Cloud, not this one. The adults usually let the smaller ones eat first, so the babies usually carry the best shit."

Cloud thought it actually might have been really sweet to find a cell phone or extra Mp3 player batteries. He got rather excited about the idea, and pulled out his knife and carefully rolled the body onto it's back, and made a dainty cut down the center of its' stomach. It wasn't very wet inside the demon, more like dusty and ragged. He cut it open a little more when he saw something that glowed slightly inside of it.

He took the tube out, and easily recognized the serial number printed on the label. "...It's a max potion."

The SOLDIERs ooh'd and aah'd. Zack nodded. "See? You gotta check them, you might find something really cool!" Cloud had absolutely no use for such an item, and he immediately tried to give it to Zack. "No way! That's your first find, it's bad luck to give it away."

Cloud looked at the tiny tube, knowing damn well this type of thing was designed for someone like Zack's, or hell - Sephiroth's use. But he decided that it wasn't a bad thing to have around just in case. He put it in his bag for safekeeping, and followed the rest of the SOLDIERs as they moved out.

He stopped and looked at the demon as it laid cut open and dead in the snow. He'd never, ever killed anything in his life bigger than a spider. And even then, he usually held the flashlight while his mother beat them to death with her heels.

He looked at the little thing in its death, and realized he'd fought it without a second thought. There was no humane sort of respect, he'd felt that it was either him or it. In hindsight, it probably wasn't that dramatic. And if he'd known it was only a baby... would he have tried to let it go?

Cloud supposed that most people didn't enjoy killing things, or people. He also supposed that he preferred not to, but knew he'd have to, probably many times in his life. Not just demons or spiders, but people. Maybe in cold blood. He had a license to kill, as a member of the Shin-Ra army. Just a cadet, but a member nonetheless.

He wanted to call Sephiroth and talk to him about it. He wanted to know if he was the sort of man who enjoyed the kill, or if he was a humanitarian type. Silly question, because he already knew the answer. But he wanted to ask it anyways, just to see what he would say. He wanted to know about Sephiroth's first kill. He wanted to know about the goodies he'd found.

He turned on his phone, snapped a picture of the little dead demon, sent it to Sephiroth, and then turned it off again. His phone was already halfway drained of its batteries, his own fault for gazing at beautiful, naked pictures of Sephiroth one night before sleep and forgetting to turn it back off, again. It hadn't even been worth it, he'd fallen asleep halfway through fapping. He was trying to be more careful, to conserve. Same with his Mp3 player which was already as good as dead, but wasn't dead yet. Just having a little bit of juice left in it was somehow comforting, although it was killing him to march these past few days in silence.

Speaking of which, the SOLDIERs were all now smaller in the distance. One of them stopped and hollered to him, and Cloud collected his things and sprinted to catch up with them.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next day, from a distance, Cloud could see people peppering the snow. He skipped a little, pointing with excitement. "Are those the other squads?"

Chuck, or Chuckles as they liked to call him, was a tall, brawny SOLDIER who rarely spoke, but he nodded down at Cloud. "That they are."

Cloud grinned, thanking Jesus, Mary and Joseph that their endless march was finally over. Even if there was more to do, which he was sure there was, this part was over. Everything was a step closer to battle, a step closer to victory, and a step closer to getting the hell out of the snow.

Their squad of seven SOLDIERs and one cadet joined twelve other squads, and became a troop. Zack was their leader, and went about to speak with the other higher-ranking officers. Some of Cloud's original squad found friends and began to chat with them, and he squinted his eyes for either Sephiroth or another drummer.

He grimaced when he finally found the only person within a million mile radius that was his own rank. He was lying in the snow looking like a crime scene with his red hair splayed out around him.

Cloud rolled his eyes and approached. "Hey Reno."

"Yo," Reno answered, but didn't move to get up. "How long've you been walkin'?"

Cloud had to think about that, as time had begun to blend seamlessly. "Four days. This is day five, actually."

"Ouch," Reno said. "Three here, and I feel like I could just about die."

"Me too... gear wasn't too heavy, though," Cloud said with a snort. Their scuffle seemed like a million years ago.

Reno's mental cogs seemed to slowly turn until he caught on. "Oh wow. Sorry about that."

Zack approached Cloud with both thumbs valiantly held up. "We're staying here for the night!"

Cloud wasn't sure why Zack was so happy about this. "Yay?"

"And meeting up with twelve more troops tomorrow!" Zack added, seeming as though Cloud should be catching onto something.

"Neat?" Cloud shrugged.

Zack looked bewildered at Cloud. "Well, aren't you gonna ask me about your surprise?"

Cloud blinked, and slowly smiled. "Zack... when am I gonna see Seph...?"

"Tomorrow!" Zack announced. "Surprise!"

Cloud couldn't stop himself from hopping into the air, then wincing and rubbing at his sore legs. He went about choosing a spot nearby Zack to pitch his tent, before his body gave out entirely. Besides, he was gonna need his leg muscles tomorrow! Hubba hubba!

Reno took the liberty of leaning all over Cloud's work. "Heeey... question..."

Cloud looked up inquisitively as he secured his pack against one of his tent posts.

"It's silly for us to both have to pitch tents, am I right? How's about you pitch this tent tonight, we share, and I'll pitch tomorrow?"

"Oh dream on, Reno," Cloud muttered, and went back to work.

Reno balked. "Listen, don't get the wrong idea! I'm not tryin' anything funny! Afterall, I have a very tall, very tough boyfriend who'd beat your blonde little ass for such an assumption!"

Cloud grinned. "I have a very tall, very tough boyfriend, too. He'd beat your redheaded ass for trying to pitch anything around me, smartass."

Reno grunted, and plopped down onto his butt in the snow. "Please, Cloud? I can't even lift my arm, I'm so tired. See?" He made to lift his arm, and it wobbled helplessly at his side. "How could I rape you?"

Cloud chuckled. There was room in his tent for two. He was a small occupant, after all. Also, he was so sick of assembling and breaking down the fucking tent he wanted to puke. "...Okay. But you're breaking down in the morning and setting up tomorrow night."

"Cross my heart and hope to die!" Reno promised, sticking his pinky out to Cloud.

Cloud curled his own around it and nodded. He finished setting up for the night, and the two went to the mass area for dinner. With over a hundred SOLDIERs, army and personnel, it was now more of a challenge to get some grub. But Guy and a few others had taken it upon themselves to be the troops' cavemen, and dragged some delicious-looking monsters back to chow down upon.

Guy even found Cloud and Reno in the fray of hungry gentlemen. "Here, boys. For the red one, you're getting this. Now eat all of that, son, that's the lower intestine, very nutritious and great for the sperm count. And for Cloud," 'Plop' went the meat into Cloud's soup, "I know you like the face!"

There was still a little light outside after they were done eating, but there was nothing Cloud wanted to do beyond sleep. He made his way to his tent... well, their tent. Reno followed, barely keeping his head up as he walked beside him.

They both had enough room to crawl in, worm into their sleeping bags, and roll over.

It was very odd sleeping next to someone else and not getting held by them. As if Reno was thinking something similar, he cleared his throat. "So. Zack was saying something about you meeting up with General Sephiroth tomorrow?"

Cloud smiled in the near dark at the reminder. "Yeah. We're, well... You probably already know, right?"

"Oh yeah," Reno nodded. "One of my friends fucks Drew, Drew's friends with Skylar, prolly fucks him, too. Told Drew all about it. He told me all about it. You know how it all goes."

Cloud laughed, embarrassed that his personal life was slutty academy grapevine gossip. He used to tap into the grapevine himself, but he was lately uninterested in the lives of others. He had too much going on in his own. "I haven't seen him in like... god. Almost three months, now."

Reno whistled through his teeth. "Damn. I haven't seen mine in three weeks and I'm dying."

"What's his name?" Cloud smiled, rolling over to look at Reno.

"Rude. Rudie," Reno cooed affectionately, and rolled over to face Cloud. For two people so tired they could barely see straight, they managed to speak for a long while about their respective others, and found they had a lot in common by just being in a relationship.

Reno's challenge was that Rude was a brand new Turk, always training, always busy, and always away. Cloud had the exact same difficulties with Sephiroth, lately on an even larger scale. Reno had begun dating Rude roughly around the same time Cloud met Sephiroth. Both Reno and Cloud longed to be finished with school to be closer to their sweethearts.

Also, Reno apparently enjoyed punk music as much as Cloud did, and asked Cloud if his labret piercing had hurt. Cloud asked Reno if he had any tattoos, and Reno told him of his plans for under-the-eye scarification upon his eighteenth birthday.

They both grew up with only their mothers and no father around. Both boys confessed to each other that they were total mama's boys. Cloud told Reno all about getting his hair done by his mother, and Reno had been slightly humiliated. Reno informed Cloud that he was dead meat when his mother found out that she was kept in the dark about his deployment.

They went to sleep with their heads full of pleasant thoughts about their boyfriends, music, and body mutilation and woke up the next morning as friends. Even though it was a part of the bargain that Reno was to put away the tent on his own, Cloud helped him out anyways, and soon it was another day of marching.

This was unlike the other days, however. This day Zack said he was going to finally get to see Sephiroth. When a large group appeared in the distance, far larger and far more concentrated than the troop they were in, Cloud began to trot happily.

They merged into the group and dispersed, becoming one with the other uniformed members of the Shin-Ra army. Cloud didn't see any other drummerboys, or Sephiroth, but he did see someone that he had business with.

Cloud touched Reno's arm. "Hey, wait for me just a minute!"

Before Reno could bitch about it, Cloud was already trotting away and digging into his pack. Genesis was sitting next to a flickering campfire, reading. Cloud approached him carefully. "Gen? Sir?"

Genesis looked like he might have ignored him, but his nose twitched a little, and he looked over his book to the pink letter being held out to him. Cloud smiled. "From Rufus, sir. He gave it to me before I left, for you."

Genesis slowly reached out and took it, and turned it over. It remained perfectly sealed, every millimeter of the sticky edge down tight. "Ugh. He knows I hate opening sealed letters. Do you know what they make that envelope glue out of?"

"Rufus licked it," Cloud prodded.

Genesis moaned in disgust. "Tell me he didn't... ugh."

Cloud grinned, and could think of nothing more to say, except... "Genesis? Do you know where Sephiroth is?"

"He's prancing around here somewhere," he muttered, distastefully ripping open the letter with a great amount of grace.

Cloud waited for a moment longer before realizing he wasn't going to get a much clearer answer than that, and left him. He strolled back over to Reno and they continued following their SOLDIERs in the near distance, when a figure in black crossed Cloud's peripheral vision. He didn't want to hope too hard, but his mouth parted a little when he looked to the side.

He stopped immediately. Sephiroth was beautiful when he was standing in the snow.

He was perhaps twenty feet away, but it seemed like more, like an impassable distance. He was walking alongside a few other men and talking, his lips moving to create beautiful, enticing shapes over his sharp teeth.

Cloud had been afraid of them at first, but he knew they were gentle... unless he didn't want them to be. He knew what those teeth felt like against his skin, raking along the most tender parts of him.

Cloud actually stepped forward a step or two, but his senses kicked in. This wasn't the place to approach Sephiroth, not like that. He'd have to wait to be approached, if at all.

He stood as tall as he could, staring intently. Here! Look over here! Notice me, dear!

But Sephiroth's didn't. Cloud's heart broke into a hundred, hungry pieces before he remembered that he was wearing the stupid beret, thus stifling his most recognizable trait. He quickly removed the beret and shook his head a little, hoping for once in his life it would bounce up into the yellow jagged planes that had earned him a childhood of ridicule.

They must have, because Sephiroth's head snapped in his direction.

From so close and so far, he cut Cloud's heart with a wide, happy smile that hinted at the angelic sunshine he must have wielded as a small boy. Cloud couldn't help but let his face split into a joyous grin in response. He couldn't be the one to close that vast distance between them, but everything in his posture and energy invited his beloved to approach.

And Sephiroth might have, if it weren't for his attention taken again by one of the people he was with... but his eyes crept back over to Cloud, as if he was trying to tell him something.

Cloud blinked. Sephiroth's eyes flicked back to his companions, and he shook his head slightly.

He wanted to come over. But he couldn't.

Reno was exhausted and utterly oblivious, and became impatient. "C'mon."

Cloud was torn. He would have waited there all day for Sephiroth to spare a moment for him, but that wasn't what he was there for. And if he lost his group just to wait for a kiss, he couldn't imagine Sephiroth being too terribly proud of him.

So instead of looking upset about it, Cloud saluted.

Sephiroth looked at him for a moment longer, before finally turning away and following his posse.

He slid his beret back onto his head and followed Reno through the camp until they left Sephiroth behind, lost in the crowd.

With Reno's back to him, he sobbed once before he indulged in a silent, dry cry.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud woke up with a large, gloved hand covering his mouth, and a knee positioned between his legs.

Rape! he thought, instantly coming to full alertness.

This was the moment he'd been waiting for all his life - especially the past several months at the academy. Some hotheaded closet-case beef nut was planning on using his openly gay...and okay, slightly feminine, lily-white ass to release some sort of pent up homosexual rage.

Or worse. This was a sniffling, sexually insane serial killer-type who'd been stalking Cloud since his arrival at camp, waiting for a ripe time to pick him off like a sickly lamb in a flock of sheep. He was going to rape his ear canal while filleting his skin with a hot hunting knife, then he'd wear his face until someone realized he wasn't Cloud. The event unfortunately wouldn't kill him, and he'd be forced to live life faceless and ear-fucked, while Sephiroth remained his semi-affectionate pen pal while relocating permanently to Junon to make things less awkward between the two of them.

Or worse! This heavy prick was a completely straight man who was going to call him his wife's name while gently making love to him. He'd go limp without even blowing his load when the delusion lifted and he realized Cloud didn't possess a vagina. Then he'd sob and ask to be held, and then show pictures of his children.

Whatever the case may be, Cloud Strife's orifices were not open for business.

Cloud bit his attacker's hand through his glove and brought a knee up between his legs, making satisfying contact with the thick rod of junk he carried around in his pants.

The attacker squeaked a little under his breath, and wrapped around Cloud in a sudden, shockingly forceful lock. Cloud swallowed hard, wondering if maybe this particular ear fucker was going to actually get the better of him.

Not a chance! He wriggled furiously in self defense.

"Baby, shh..." A hot breath came out against his ear.

The oxygen in Cloud's body disappeared, and he parted his lips beneath the hand over his face. He couldn't see anything in the extreme Northern Crater darkness, but the man above him opened his eyes, and the sharp green glow of two cat eyes slit the darkness.

Cloud whispered fiercely and joyously behind his hand, "Smph!"

Sephiroth whispered back so quietly it sounded more like a thought. "Be quiet."

Cloud wiggled until his arms were free of his sleeping bag, and threw them around Sephiroth. The sheer heat he was confronted with was like a blast of humid summer wind. It was rolling off of his lover's skin so hard that Cloud expected steam to be coming off the man.

He felt so good in the hellish cold, he absolutely vanquished it. It was like Sephiroth's body was made for nothing else but Cloud's comfort and pleasure. Then Cloud remembered his foolish assault and clutched onto his coat, whispering, "I'm so sorry for hitting you!"

"S'okay, I'm fine... don't ever knee my nuts again, though..."

Cloud giggled guiltily and leaned up, "God, Seph. Kiss me."

"Wait. Close your eyes for a second," He said.

Cloud obeyed.

"Okay, you can open 'em."

Cloud obeyed again, and fluttered his eyes against an unexpected, but soft lighting, like the sun had risen just for the two of them. He blinked, and then his eyes found Sephiroth. He was on his elbows above him, gazing down as is he was stuck on a pause.

Cloud was frozen also. Partially in disbelief, but also due to an extreme case of virgin-like nerves.

Sephiroth was the first to move. He shifted to lie more heavily on Cloud, and brought those beautiful lips closer to his.

Cloud slid his hands onto Sephiroth's shoulders as he neared, and shuddered slightly as warm arms wrapped firmly around his waist, pulling him up through his sleeping bag.

Their lips met, moist and warm, but slightly chapped from the cold. Touching his tongue to Sephiroth's felt startlingly like licking a charged battery, his entire body tingled and he became instantly desperate and heated.

Sephiroth tilted his head, and slid his tongue further past Cloud's lips, dominating their kiss easily. Cloud's fingers burrowed into his hair and rubbed at his scalp. Feeling Sephiroth's hard, long body drape over him sent a hot spark of urgency shot through Cloud, and he pressed his face closer to Sephiroth's. He nudged his tongue against Sephiroth's with force, pushing it down to the bottom of his mouth. He licked his sharp, pointed teeth, and began to kick to be free of the sleeping bag.

"I don't wanna rush," Sephiroth said, breaking their kiss to rub his nose against Cloud's cheek, and to unzip Cloud's bag. "But we don't have a ton of time. I'm sorry, b -"

"I love you," Cloud whispered, cutting his senseless apology short. "I'm just glad you're here."

Sephiroth smiled, and Cloud's world as moved. It was such a beautiful, perfect thing that Cloud couldn't help but destroy it with his own mouth.

Sephiroth made a sexy, drawn out affirmative noise in his throat, and his fingers unzipped Cloud out of his sleeping bag and spread over his body underneath. Cloud's eyes fluttered, and he tore his mouth away from Sephiroth's to bite his black cadet gloves and rip them away from his hands.

He let his bare hands sink into Sephiroth's hair, and bit at the crack in Sephiroth's bottom lip, stroking his tongue along the tiny, delicious little imperfection. Sephiroth moaned a little in his mouth, and Cloud's fingers moved to the buttons on his uniform shirt to be rid of it.

"Hey, careful. You only have two of those," Sephiroth said gently, taking Cloud's overeager hands, and bringing them to his lips. "Calm down a little bit."

"I can't!" Cloud whimpered, gasping for air.

Sephiroth chuckled and shushed, the soft tone racking dozens of shivers through Cloud's body. Cloud did, then put his face against Sephiroth's neck and breathed. After a few long moments, Sephiroth put Cloud's hands on his shoulders, where they curled into his hair.

Sephiroth continued to unbutton Cloud's shirt carefully, but also not teasing his body any further than he already was. Once it was off, he gave Cloud what he wanted, running wide, flat palms over his skin. He kissed the nearest, small nipple, and pulled it into his mouth.

"Oh God..." Cloud moaned, and a whine began low in his throat.

"Sensitive?" Sephiroth smiled, flicking his hot tongue over it.

"It's this fucking stupid cold," Cloud whined, kicking his feet a little. "I've had high beams for weeks."

"Told you...I'm gonna take care of you..." Sephiroth said, giving both hyper sensitized little buds a warm treatment with his mouth and tongue.

Cloud's breath caught in his throat over and over, and he began to grind uncontrollably against Sephiroth's hips. The General smiled and worked downwards, kissing the goose bumped skin of Cloud's stomach and sides, sucking softly on his hipbones as he easily undid Cloud's fatigues.

Cloud was only too eager to help himself be rid of the constricting uniform fatigues, and kicked his feet to help get them off of his body. Finally naked, he sat up and fumbled with Sephiroth's closures on his pants. He pawed at the leather until he was out of his way, and finally regained enough nimbleness in his fingers to quickly undo Sephiroth's belts and straps with care. He took a moment to claw his short nails down Sephiroth's sides, grinning at the answering hiss and arch from his beloved.

Cloud made a hungry sound and pounced as the pants came sliding off, rolling Sephiroth's hard, warm body onto his back. He licked his way down Sephiroth's delicious stomach and began a little feast on the inside of his slender thighs. Cloud then took one of the tightened balls into his mouth, and sucked gently, rolling his tongue over the smooth, heavy sack. Sephiroth shifted up on his elbows, watching as Cloud eagerly worked his mouth up the underside of his cock.

"I missed this," Cloud whispered over the head before tonguing the slit. He was talking about much more than just Sephiroth's anatomy.

Sephiroth smiled in a slightly shy sort of appreciation. Cloud didn't suck, only moved his lips along the shaft with his fluttering blue eyes, teasing the head with the wet warmth of his mouth periodically. After a few moments, his lips then came kissing back up Sephiroth's abdomen.

He settled himself over Sephiroth's lap, hugging his neck while kissing his lover's face. Cloud took one of Sephiroth's hands, which were stroking affectionate at his hips, and gently moved it back over his ass in a slightly coy, silent suggestion. Sephiroth let his fingertips dip between the crack, but there was an issue to be addressed, and that had to do with lubrication, which did not come easy in any facet in the Northern Crater.

Then from seemingly nowhere, Sephiroth produced a tube of Pleasureglide. "I thought we might need this sometime up here."

Cloud giggled and laid his cheek against Sephiroth's shoulder and did his best to relax as two of his lover's slick fingers pushed inside. Cloud gasped as the fingers slid in and out, a bit further each time until they both dove in to the knuckle.

"I'm ready," Cloud insisted after the soft pads of Sephiroth's fingers began to steadily flick back and forth over his prostate. The sensations flooding his lower body were causing his thighs to waver, and anxiety heated his limbs. He didn't want to wait anymore.

Sephiroth pushed his fingers in a few more times, kissing Cloud into distraction while making sure he was as ready as he claimed to be. He then took his cock and touched it to the hot little opening, and pulled on Cloud's waist in invitation.

It felt both wonderful and awful to sink all the way down onto Sephiroth after being without him for so long. But the pain was easily eclipsed by the warmth and satisfaction of coming home to his lover's body. Cloud groaned in bittersweet agony and wrapped both arms tightly around Sephiroth's neck.

"M'sorry..." Sephiroth said sincerely, apologizing for the pain their physical love sometimes caused Cloud.

"It won't be so bad after a second," he whispered through his teeth.

Sephiroth rubbed his cheek alongside Cloud's, his voice soft but Cloud could feel his body's thrumming tension and restrained desire to move, push, fuck.

"Take your time." Sephiroth pushed Cloud's hair out of his face, tucking the longer locks behind his ears. "I've been gone a while, but I'm here now. Pretty soon there'll be times when you're gone, away for work and shit. But we'll always belong to each other. We have our whole lives, y'know."

Cloud took a moment to catch his breath and nodded, turning his face to kiss Sephiroth's fingertips, then his lips. He hissed as Sephiroth cupped his ass and lifted him up slowly, the friction this caused both delicious and painful.

He then took a little bit more control, and breathed steadily as he used his thighs to rock gently against Sephiroth. Cloud suddenly twisted in his arms, his lips falling apart to cry out against his shoulder. He moaned deeply and ground his hips in that circular little motion again.

"That's right..." Sephiroth purred in his hair. "Just use it, baby."

Cloud hiccupped with pleasure at these words, and tried to pull the flap of his sleeping bag back when Reno snatched it off of him.

"Get up," Reno called.

"I can't..." Cloud uttered, wrapping his arms around himself against the sudden cold.

Oh, he was also so hot. The air was thick between them, Sephiroth's sweat dripped down his neck in salty droplets, like rain rolling down glass. Their bodies slid smoothly across each other, that big cock easily sliding in and out of his body and every single time nudging that wonderful place inside him. Cloud kissed his corded throat sensually, licking a line of tasty sweat up to his even tastier lips.

Sephiroth held Cloud still and forcefully popped his hips up between Cloud's spread thighs. "Come on, baby, shoot it all over me... I like it when you get it on my nipples..."

Cloud liked that, too! He smiled and nuzzled into his scratchy little blanket happily.

Reno was out of patience. He grabbed a handful of Cloud's hair and yanked on it. He earned a rough howl from Cloud that ended in more of a needy purr.

"Open your goddamn eyes! You already missed breakfast!" Reno demanded with a blush.

Cloud finally did open his eyes, and any remnants of the dream he was hanging onto were torn away from him. He furrowed his brow and rolled over onto his stomach. "Fuck! I was having an amaaazing dream!" Cloud whimpered, shaking a little as he was still only a stone's throw away from coming right in his pants. "...Sephiroth came in here... we were making so many babies."

Reno's mouth lifted into a smile, and he didn't have a drop of pity when he threw fresh bleach on Cloud's desire. "Yup. You were dreaming, alright."

Cloud felt the desperate, pulsing ache in his pants begin to die with the cold and the disgusting truth in Reno's words. Just a dream. Always just a goddamn dream.

How much longer was he going to have to wait!?

"Hello? We're still moving out, get your shit together and let's go."

Cloud rubbed his eyes with a deep frown and wriggled out of his sleeping bag. He spent the next hour working with Reno to disassemble their tent and divvy up the load, Reno carrying more of the heavier items, and Cloud carrying the more awkwardly shaped ones. They followed the herd of men as they migrated ever closer to battle.

Stanley sometimes sent messages to Cloud, short and somehow haughty even through a text only format. The other drummers were all safe and well, and apparently nobody had seen battle yet. From what he hinted, there might only be just one.

Cloud didn't know if he felt more excited or nervous, but rather some sickening combination of the two. He didn't doubt his own drumming, or the ability of the SOLDIERs to keep him safe. But it scared him to know that there was always the fluke factor, always a chance of bodily harm or even death.

It was possible. It was very possible.

Zack had told him in so many words that he'd have to be a dead-ass Popsicle in the snow first for him to allow anything to happen to him. The Lieutenant saying something like that would have been comforting enough, but the fact that it was Zack saying it also made Cloud brave. From the first minute of meeting Zack, there had been an almost familial connection between the two of them, which had become something more during his stay with him at the Crater. He trusted Zack to guard him, and not only as a favor to Sephiroth.

Reno became giddy halfway through the day, one of his unexpected outbursts of sudden, manic energy. "My girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tii~iime!"

Cloud turned to him, waiting for the rest of the song to come tumbling out of his shivering lips, but it didn't. Reno's icy eyes turned to his.

"Can you hear it? In the snow."

"Hear what?" Cloud smiled.

"I've been hearin' a beat in the snow."

Cloud tried, but only heard crunching. But then, ever so slowly, he could hear a steady something rumbling underneath all the senseless noise. There were only two feet on each man, and they came down on a one or a two. It really could have been any song with a strong, quick beat, and Cloud decided that it might as well have been Sir Mix-a-Lot.

"Okay, let's do this," Cloud grinned.

Reno clapped his hands, seeming to be waiting for the right time, then shouted, "I like big butts and I cannot lie!"

Cloud was beet red, but shuffled along and sang strongly. "You other brothers can't deny!"

"When a girl walks in with an itty, bitty waist - !"

" - and a round thing in your face - !"

Cloud was suddenly face down with a hot weight on his back. He was about to protest being drowned in the snow for simply indulging in a little bit of innocent house rap, when the ground shook.

When the shock ebbed, Cloud looked up and saw a huge patch of snow melted and charred nearby. His eyes flicked over his shoulder and he saw that it was Max on his back, his friendly features set and concentrated.

The rest of the SOLDIERs were paused similarly, all looking to the East. Cloud looked himself, and in the great white nothing of the Northern Crater, he could make out an unimpressive mountain.

Then it began to come together for him. They'd just been shot at for no goddamn reason.

No fair... some extremely young part of Cloud's brain decided.

Max gripped the straps of Cloud's pack and hauled him up to his feet like he weighed less than nothing, and put himself in front of him. Cloud's eyes searched for Reno, and found him similarly shielded behind Chuckles.

There were several more moments of intense stillness, but Cloud could sense that the men were anxious, waiting.

Shoot back! Cloud thought, peeking around Max curiously, before being pushed back into place.

Zack then did something that Cloud would later spend time trying to work out in his mind. Magic was still just so alien to him that his brain had difficulty accepting what he saw.

What he did, was create a shield.

To Cloud, Zack blew bubbles on a colossal scale. They surrounded their group, then faded. But every so often, the sun would catch and sparkle slightly. Cloud assumed they hadn't done this before because that slight sparkle only increased their visibility. Also, he could see there was a constant effort on Zack's part to keep it up.

When the shield was in place, Max moved away from Cloud. He looked down and saw his slightly bewildered expression, and patted the side of his neck. The guys continued on, but the drummer boys weren't in the mood to rap anymore.

They cleared a somewhat steep hill in the snow, and there was a mass gathering of personnel. Cloud was slightly jarred to suddenly find thousands of men, and wondered where they'd all come from so suddenly. If he squinted, he could see even more troops walking in from all directions.

He looked towards where they were all coming to, and realized they were standing directly next to the Crater. The Northern fucking Crater was right there. Cloud's eyes widened, and he itched to get a better look at such a landmark.

Zack was on the phone with all the casualness of chatting with Aerith, until Cloud heard him loosely use the title Colonel, and he was speaking about their brush with a small hostile group on the way to the convergence. He tried to listen in, hoping to pick up any information that might have been useful to him, or juicy.

Zack caught him eavesdropping and flicked the top of his head.

Cloud frowned and decided to use some of his cell phone's precious little battery to check for texts. He turned it on, and found one from his beloved that was sent the night prior.

Baby baby baby it killed me to not touch you...not upset I hope... cuz ur LOOKING SO DAMN GOOD!!! Cuter and hotter than ever I swear to god!! Dream about me, cuz I'm sure as FUCK gonna be dreaming about you!!!

Cloud shook his head in amusement. Sephiroth's actual speaking voice was usually so even and almost monotonous, yet his texts were always so raving and emphatic. Cloud giggled to himself, unable to stop from blushing as he typed back with his thumbs, Not upset at all. You looked sooo sexy, too! Last night I dreamt you fucked me mmm so good ~ think maybe we met up in dreamland...? See you soon.

When Cloud sent that, he took a moment to check the time, and was about to turn the phone off, when a new message came blipping in from Sephiroth almost immediately.

stay by zack thisll be over soon

Cloud reread the message again, and his heart began to throb in his chest. What did that mean exactly...?

There was a movement in the crowd of SOLDIERs, a low rumble of voices that began to steadily increase in volume, and Reno jerked on the straps of his speaker. "Holy shit, it's time! Now! Get your stuff on! We've got one minute!"

Cloud was frozen still for several seconds, and then dropped everything he was carrying to the ground, and slipped his Kevlar vest on. He then connected his wires from the drum to the speaker, and strapped the drum around his neck. He gave the tight skin of the drum an experimental tap and it shivered under the stick, and was made incredibly loud by the relatively small, but powerful speaker.

Reno passed Cloud one of his walkie talkies, and Cloud hooked it into his pocket.

The movement in the vast crowd halted, and for a moment, everyone was still and quiet. Cloud felt something tickle the side of his face, and was surprised to realize that it was sweat.

The ground shook, and Wutainese warriors in their demonized red and black uniforms appeared, dashing up at the SOLDIERs from the mouth of the Crater. Zack put his hands on Cloud and Reno's shoulders. "We're watching you, don't worry. Stay here with your backs to each other!"

And then, Zack was gone. Wasn't he going to stay and hold their hands?

Reno turned around and pressed his back into Cloud's. He was shaking.

Their walkie talkies both rumbled with a voice neither recognized, "Long roll."

Long roll was a continuous drum roll. Cloud remembered that. Cloud could do that. Sure.

So, he did. Although the SOLDIERS, soldiers, and army were already heading off, they quickened eagerly when the beat began to pour out of their speakers.

It was almost as though the SOLDIERs needed ass-kicking music. If that's what they needed, Cloud would surely give it to them. The thing about long roll, was that typically they required a solid minute of rolling to get the fucking message across, and then, it was generally about making noise until another roll was announced.

"Cloud, look," Reno called, bringing Cloud up from some senseless place within.

"Oh," Cloud said dumbly. There was an enemy warrior coming directly at them, screaming in rage, brandishing a huge sword. Cloud kept rolling, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the warrior was more or less on the ground perhaps 15 feet in front of them. More or less, parts of him were missing. He looked over at Reno, who was busy being enthralled with everything that was happening around them.

"Do you know Anal Orgasm?" Cloud called out over his shoulder.

"Oh, hell yeah!" Reno nodded, his smile widening as another enemy warrior was diced before them. Cloud caught it this time, and felt a surreal smile form on his face.

It was unreal. It was fucking unreal. Cloud's thoughts couldn't get more complex than that. He kept thinking it over and over.

Unreal. This is un fucking real.

"Do you know it by heart? Do you know track 9?" Cloud asked, adding an extra lanky beat into the roll to ease up on his wrists. The last thing he wanted to do was to get sore.

"Track 9..." Reno thought about it, then smiled. "Track nine! Yeah, it's called Ass In Nine!"

"Let's do that," Cloud said, as their minute of nonstop rolling was long over.

Reno nodded, and they both stopped, clicked a brief countdown with their sticks, then picked up together. Reno wasn't as perfect as Cloud was at the rhythm, and he wasn't perfect either without a cymbal, but it was quick and happy and punk, which was just what the battle needed. Better yet, it was an easy beat, and it was something they could both keep up with for a long time.

Mm-bump, mm-bump, mm-bump. After several minutes, it almost seemed like the battle was a music video, like they were all fighting and dying purposely to their beat. Cloud quickened it. Reno followed. So did the warriors and the Shin-Ra army.

This is what a heart feels like. Cloud thought to himself, and it seemed all that much more true when the dying seemed to bleed that much faster with the quickened rhythm.

"Dead Kennedys!" Reno called. "Know them?"

"Of course I do!" Cloud spat over his shoulder, as if Reno was insulting him by asking such an obvious question.

"Life Sentence!" Reno suggested, and clicked his sticks once for Cloud to recalibrate his brain to a new beat, and then let it all out. Cloud smiled, and although it might have just been the two or three nerves in his brain that weren't absolutely fried... he was having a fuck of a lot of fun.

So far he'd seen five men who were coming at him with every intent to kill him, and every single one of them were sliced through by a different SOLDIER. It wasn't that just Zack was watching them, or just his original seven SOLDIER squad buddies were watching after them. Everyone was. All of them.

Almost like the way Cloud made sure not too much water got onto his Mp3 player in the rain. They didn't need the music. But it sure did help the morale.

The air became smoky and thick, and it became more difficult for Cloud to see more than a few feet in front of him. He squinted, although it wasn't necessary for him to see anything at all, he wanted to see, almost needed to see. But the army was using their guns more and more as time went on, and soon Cloud couldn't see anything at all.

Out of nowhere, Reno stopped drumming, and punched Cloud in the back hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He hit the ground, and the first thoughts that ran through his mind had to do with treachery and double crossing. But then he spotted a bullet lying on the ground near his hand that looked more like a small cannonball. It was covered in blood.

Cloud turned around, and saw Reno's red hair pooled on the ground, and the exact same shade of red blossoming and staining his white uniform shirt.

Reno wasn't wearing his Kevlar vest.

It had come out the other side of Reno. The impact from a bullet that size would have been enough to cause injuries with the vest, and Cloud could feel a deep bruise blooming on his back. He was suddenly seething with an unexpected, and almost uncontrollable rage.

"You dumbass, stupid fuck, why don't you have your vest on!?" Cloud screamed, wanting nothing more than to strike his fatally injured friend.

Reno tried to answer, but blood bubbled from between his lips instead. Cloud didn't want to look at the wound, but he couldn't help it. It was like Reno was holding a bowl of blood on his stomach.

"Don't stop!" Reno pleaded with him when he could finally suck in enough air to form words, both hands covering the gaping hole in his stomach. He began to inhale and exhale, and Cloud could see what was inside of Reno pushing at his hands.

Cloud threw up a little and spat it aside as he searched through his gear that was lying on the ground nearby, and he brought out the little vial of max potion. He grabbed Reno's face and pushed his cheeks together until his lips separated over his teeth.

"Please open your mouth!" Cloud moaned.

Reno couldn't seem to stop clenching his teeth, and his body began to seize violently on the snow. He was dying.

"Open your fucking mouth!" Cloud repeated, using his fingers to attempt to pry Reno's teeth apart. Reno gasped momentarily, allowing Cloud a split second to push his fingers in. The teeth clamped down again almost immediately, but Cloud didn't feel the pain, he only poured the open vial into Reno's mouth. It pooled beneath his tongue, which didn't move.

Reno's lips were the same color as the snow.

He had to get another haircut from Reno's mother in five weeks.

Cloud then remembered something he'd learned from his mother when she tried to force him to swallow disgusting medicine as a small child. He suddenly remembered it perfectly, every detail. He was sitting on her lap, squirming to get away. She had her hand over his mouth so he couldn't spit the medicine back out. "Swallow, Clow! You won't taste it anymore if you just fucking swallow it!"

Cloud remembered how it felt to be little. He didn't want to do it because he simply didn't want to do it, so he wouldn't do it, no matter what. Then, he felt her fingers running quickly down his throat, and it went down almost at once, completely without his permission. The taste was mostly gone, and his mother took her hand off of his mouth and just smiled down at him. She'd been barely 19 at the time, but to him, she was so ancient and wise. He'd wiped his watering eyes, looking up at her with sudden clarity of his lot in life. His momma knew what was best.

Cloud's fingers ran down Reno's throat over and over to stimulate his swallow reflex, to get the liquid into his stomach, and right to the site of the injury. Reno's throat contracted and he gasped a little, enough for Cloud to get his bruised and bloodied fingers out from between his teeth.

He eagerly looked at Reno's wound again. It hadn't changed at all.

For a terrible moment he thought maybe it wasn't max potion, maybe it was expired or mislabeled. Or perhaps he had to do something extra to make it work, something to do with materia. Or maybe it just wasn't enough to help him. Cloud waited tensely, waited for some sort of miracle to happen, but it never did. The blood was still there.

"Don't worry, Cloud. It doesn't hurt anymore..." Reno finally murmured, and his eyes drifted closed. His breathing evened out, and stopped.

Cloud gagged inside his chest, staring at Reno's face in complete shock.

Then Reno's eyes opened again. "Tell my ma I love her."

Cloud nodded, sniffing a little as Reno's icy blue eyes fluttered closed once more...forever. His lower lip trembled, and he put an arm underneath Reno's head to hold him. "I'm so sorry, Reno."

"S'okay."

Cloud sobbed again. "Do you... see the life stream?"

"No..." Reno breathed.

Cloud gazed down at him. "How about now?"

"No," Reno shook his head a little. "...Shit, it takes a long time to die."

Cloud blinked and looked at Reno's wound, touching his stomach tenderly with his gloved fingertips. The blood hadn't gone anywhere, but the wound had closed perfectly. He smacked the redhead upside the head enough to rock it side to side. "You're perfectly fine, you fucking idiot!"

Cloud felt his radio buzz against his hip. It was Zack's voice. "Cloud Strife, I can't hear your drums, answer immediately."

Reno stopped clutching his now imaginary deathblow, his eyes blinking in disbelief. Cloud wiped at it the closed wound again to prove that nothing was wrong.

Reno immediately sat up, shrugging off Cloud's embrace. He helped Reno up, anyways. He might have been healed, but he was covered in his own blood. He couldn't have been feeling all that great.

"Put your vest on for fuck's sake!" Cloud barked, and Reno began to strip off his now ruined shirt and fumble around in his gear for the Kevlar.

"I've never needed it before..." Reno mumbled sheepishly as he quickly put it on.

Cloud's radio buzzed again before they both heard Zack call through, almost hysterical. "Cloud! Are you guys alright?! Reno's radio is out! Do you need help? Are you conscious? Do you have a flare?"

He sounded awfully close by, and Cloud had just raised his walkie talkie to his lips to respond when he felt the Zack's arms lock around his neck. "Cloud! Are you guys okay?"

Cloud smiled, clutching momentarily onto Zack before pushing him away and moving towards his drums. "We're both fine."

"You almost gave me a heart attack!" Zack scolded, before disappearing into the smoke.

"I almost died!" Reno bragged after him, clicking his sticks over his drum, which was still in perfect, if bloody shape.

Cloud grinned and clicked along. When they began to drum anew, he was almost certain he heard the surrounding SOLDIERs cheer.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

They stood back to back again, this time both fully padded with Kevlar. Cloud was nicked with a bullet on his leg, and one forearm was splashed with a bit of tiny shrapnel.

Reno was shot once more, but it bounced off the Kevlar as it should have. He was also cut with a SOLDIER's sword across his thigh, and the man stopped to heavily apologize before bouncing back into battle.

When it was all over, it was as sudden as when it had started. There was a call on the radio for a slow roll. They obeyed; a medium tempo drum roll, a warning that it was over soon. This was the most desperate, dangerous time in the battle for whoever was losing. And Cloud knew with ever fiber that it was the Wutainese who were bested. Finally, there was a call on his radio for a halt.

They stopped. It was done. There was silence. The smoke immediately began to clear.

Whoever could walk picked themselves up and returned to their groups. The red and black warriors seemed to all disappear at once. Reno and Cloud stayed put until Davie and Max collected them, and they followed them through the mess that had been made in the snow.

All that were left were the bodies.

Cloud didn't look at them. There weren't many SOLDIERs or other Shin-Ra personnel, but there were some. And the ones that were pulled down into their deaths were done so with more than just bullets or swords. They seemed to have been blasted apart with heavier artillery.

His mind conjured up a thought so real he bit his lip against crying out. What would he do if he were to see silver hair splashed with blood, his beloved's body crashed to the ground like a broken toy? Impossible.

Cloud looked down at his boots as they walked out of the territory, but could hear Reno gasp under his breath every so often. "Jesus Christ," he kept saying. "...Jesus Christ."

They walked for a few hours in silence, back from where they'd come from. The SOLDIERs were all exhausted and weary, but marched quickly to get to a safe place to rest. Cloud took inventory of who was with them. Davie was fine. Chuckles was fine. Max seemed to have had an injury to his arm, but was fine now. The couple who'd given Cloud their spare blanket were both alright, marching near each other. Zack was glowing with a stern, focused sort of handsomeness. Cloud went over and over, trying to think of who was missing.

Someone was missing. Then it hit him. 'Here son, have some face!'

Guy was gone. Guy, the barbequer. Guy, the excellent father.

Cloud sobbed in his throat. Was he perhaps a bit too old? Did someone get the better of him out of nowhere? Maybe if Reno had been wearing his vest, and Cloud still had the max potion, maybe maybe maybe he could have saved him.

Be proud. You saved one person today. A voice that Cloud didn't mentally recognize reasoned within his swirling thoughts. It was Guy's time. He died in battle. Be proud for him, and for yourself.

It was his mother's voice. He wasn't sure if that's what she would say if she were here, but it was convincing enough. He regretted his decision of not telling her about the entire situation. He wanted her to be proud of him when he came back safely, not angry for not being told.

And what if he had been injured or even killed? What if he had? Were a few weeks of not worrying worth that traumatic shock?

They stopped at a medical tent. A nurse looked over Reno's closed wounds, slapping the top of his head for not having the damned vest on. She also gave him a stitch or two in the leg and sent him on his way, with no pain-ceasing cure due to his stupidity. Cloud's time with the nurse took a little longer, as she and a doctor had to dig the bits of shrapnel out of his forearm, dousing him in alcohol every so often to prevent infection.

The doctor cracked a joke about Nibelheim natives bleeding alcohol, but Cloud was frankly in no mood to chuckle house. The alcohol hurt like a goddamn motherfucker. After they were certain to get all of the pieces of metal and bullet debris out of his skin, they gave him a cure, which also healed up the painful spot on his back from the stupid elephant bullet, and his sore, abused fingers from Reno's teeth. Done and done.

He and Reno built their little tent silently, as did the rest of the SOLDIERs. There was no dinner that night, everyone seemed to just want to sleep. Ones that did have an appetite took a protein bar into their dwelling, and that was that.

Cloud zipped himself halfway up into his sleeping bag and laid next to Reno, exhausted but unable to relax. His nerves were absolutely shot.

In the dark, he heard Reno face him, and his strange laughter tinkled out. It infected Cloud almost immediately, and they giggled together for a good long while until some SOLDIERs nearby shushed them.

Cloud put a hand over his mouth. "What are we laughing about?"

"It's too cold to cry," Reno guessed, and that only made them giggle and snort anew.

It died down and they were left looking at each other in the dark. They couldn't see each other, but they looked anyways.

"I miss Rude," Reno said suddenly. "Bad."

"I really miss Sephiroth," Cloud agreed. "I wish he was here."

Reno slid his hand over Cloud's hip.

It took him a moment too long to register what the weight was, and what it meant. When he finally did realize, he felt his body burn with embarrassed rage. Not really rage directed at Reno. Rage against himself, because with the warm, over the sleeping bag contact... Cloud felt his body react instantly.

He lifted his hand out of his sleeping bag and put it over Reno's to move it away... but he couldn't. He was stuck inside a pause, torn between a need to be touched and repulsion for who was doing the touching.

While Cloud warred with himself, Reno took his hesitation as an invitation. He dug his fingers into Cloud's sleeping bag and pulled him closer. The length of their bodies touched, separated by thick sleeping bags, but still warm and solid. Comforting. There.

Alive. Cloud's breath quickened.

Reno's hand moved. It rubbed down Cloud's thigh, then back up to his shoulder, and up into his hair. "Oh," Reno said, sounding almost as surprised as Cloud felt towards this entire situation. "Your hair ...it's soft."

Cloud's body hardened further, almost jumping due to the sudden, throbbing pressure. Cloud was horrified to let this happen, but almost equally horrified to make Reno stop. Especially as his long fingers twisted into his hair, stroked his scalp, almost teasing.

In the dark, it was almost too easy to just imagine...

"Reno," Cloud whispered, almost to remind himself of who he was with. It didn't leave his lips as a warning tone. He'd just called the redhead's name like a lover. Uttered it. Practically moaned it.

Reno took it for what it was worth, and shifted in the dark, coming more out of his sleeping bag. He slid his other arm underneath Cloud, and pushed on his chest.

Cloud laid down. Reno had come completely out of his sleeping bag, and Cloud felt him toss one of his legs over him, the fingers of one hand working at the zipper to his sleeping bag.

Cloud's body bucked when Reno's leg rubbed seductively along the length of his erection.

"Reno," Cloud repeated, finding his voice, although it was still extremely unconvincing.

"C'mon," Reno urged, covering Cloud completely, grinding his body against his.

Cloud brought both hands out of his sleeping bag to push him off. He meant to push. He wanted to push. His brains screamed for his hands to push.

But he felt, instead. He felt Reno's hard chest through his clothes, his warmth. Cloud took his hands off of Reno and shook his head, his voice coming out deep, guttural and surprising, and a tone only Sephiroth had heard before. "Don't...Rude? Seph..." The verbal mentioning of his lover's name gave Cloud a bit more conviction, He put his hands on Reno's shoulders and pushed, although gently. "We can't."

Reno bucked his hips against Cloud's hard enough to cause both of them to gasp slightly. "They're not here right now."

"...I love him," Cloud whispered, begged. "I can't."

"But you want to," Reno said, referring to Cloud's obvious arousal between them, and Cloud could feel his weight press down in all the wrong places. He could feel his cock begin to drool in his pants.

Cloud laughed a little against Reno's neck. "It wants to, sure. I won't, though."

"You don't have to fuck me," Reno hissed. "We don't even have to kiss. Just... lemme..." Reno began a steady, rhythmic rocking against Cloud's hips.

Cloud's eyes clenched closed, and he felt his own damnable body thrust up between Reno's legs. Between Reno's legs? Cloud mentally opened his eyes. Reno was straddling him. Reno was grinding his ass down on him. Reno was just a big nelly bottom, like he was.

They were both in love with another person. They were both pretending, trying to get what they needed from someone who wasn't able to give it. This solidness and warmth was so nice, but it wasn't Sephiroth. He felt his head clear a little bit, and pushed on Reno's shoulders again.

"Reno... I'm not Rude."

Reno stopped above him, almost panting. "If you don't tell, I won't either..."

"I won't do this, Reno,' Cloud repeated, finally pushing the disillusioned redhead off of his lap. "I have a better idea... let's have a chat."

"...Chat?" Reno asked, shifting quickly around beside him. Cloud heard the zip of Reno's sleeping bag, and in turn, more fully zipped up his own.

They were separated now. Not touching. Cloud felt his body tighten in disappointment, but his head cleared with relief. He could live with the disappointment of his hormones. He wouldn't be able to live with the altnernative.

"Let's just... talk," Cloud said carefully.

Reno swallowed, seeming more like himself and less like a horny incubus. "...Okay. What about?"

Cloud sat cross-legged. "Tell me about Rude. Does he have a big cock?"

Reno gasped in shock in the dark, but then slowly answered, "...Yeah. He does."

"Do you love him?"

"...Yeah," Reno answered, shifting a little in the dark. "Is Sephiroth hot without his clothes on?"

"Mm-hm..." Cloud answered, reaching down into his pants. "He's perfect, absolutely beautiful... and big... and he's always kissing me... and fucking me with his tongue..."

"Rude loves to fuck me," Reno quietly mused, maybe more to himself. "He never wants to stay in one spot, or one position. He's always changin' it... always like, trying to find a way to get it deeper..."

"Seph makes the sexiest, cutest little faces when he's getting sucked," Cloud giggled, despite the fact that he was only a few more twists away from a hard orgasm. "He's always licking his lips... and biting them..."

"Rude does that too," Reno agreed. "He likes to splatter my face... likes to see it all over me."

Cloud was there. He opened his mouth but words didn't come out, he groaned very quietly and crumpled in on himself, one fist tightly gripping his sleeping bag as he whispered. "Seph is ... Seph, mm... Seph!"

And for the first time at the Northern Crater, Cloud gave himself a much needed release. The firework was bright, but brief. He caught it all with his spare hand, and wrung himself dry with the other.

He might have been humiliated by how quickly it happened, but there wasn't much not to be humiliated about in the entirety of the situation. Besides, by the time his ears stopped ringing, Reno was already wiping his own hands on a dirty sock. He passed it over to Cloud, who grimaced, but accepted it. They unzipped the tent and threw the filthy sock out onto the snow.

Then they both zipped themselves up into their respective bags and rolled over without saying a word. Cloud had a good feeling whatever had just happened was going to remain forever unspoken.

That was fine with him. At least he hadn't cheated.

Had he?

CHAPTER IMAGE http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-Ch-20-White-119375983

Also, a very sincere thank you to all the helpful, horny, bemused, and/or squeeing reviewers http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-200-Reviews-119375760

And a side note : For those of you who aren't all up in my Deviant Art grill, I've begun posting up the doujinshi for Chapter 12. You can find the first page riight herre, and then follow along at your own leisure. http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/BA-TheDressingRoom-01-114631336

A/N

1 - Kittens has nothing at all to do with Blonde Ambition. I was semi-chewed out by a couple of dissatisfied customers, who thought Kittens was the sequel to Blonde Ambition I was talking about in last chapter's author notes. Not so. Besides, this part of BA isn't over until the fat lady sings, and Angeal ain't singing just yet. Mrahahah!

2 - In the author's notes of Chapter 13, I made a list of celebs that I would chose to bring to life the different characters in a live action BA movie. Haha, that's about 15 levels removed from reality, but it's fun to think about. Well, since then I've introduced a few other peeps. Hence:

Reno / Rob Devita

Genesis / Gackt, duh

Rufus / Mathias Lauridsen

Angeal / Hugh Jackman

Julie / Mia Maestro

Elena / Portia Di Rossi


	21. Larva

The first class SOLDIER shower rig was the most worthless contraption Sephiroth had ever encountered. Its initial point of failure was that it was too damn small, forcing him to bend his knees to prevent bumping his head on the ceiling. The second failure was its idiotic lack of hot water, making it much like standing in a tiny, icy box of torture. The third was that there was no goddamn lock on the door.

Sephiroth clamped his eyes shut and cursed raggedly under his breath as he dunked his head under the spray to wash his hair. Thick, dark blood rinsed out and down his legs to become pink and diluted, then drained away.

None of the blood was his own. At least he didn't think so. His cuts healed so fast it was hard to tell if he'd been injured or not. He often didn't mind letting himself be cut here and there, the tiny jolts of pain kept him more alert, but he had been splashed with the blood of a few different people. Those people could have been carrying any kind of disease, and he didn't want to foolishly risk getting tainted blood in his body. Even though he knew his medical staff would fix him instantly, he didn't even want even a chance of exposing Cloud to something like that.

He wanted to get the blood off as soon as possible, and not only because it was fucking disgusting, but because walking around covered in blood sent the wrong sort of message to his men. He knew what some people expected from him – they assumed he was a bastard. He was fine in fulfilling that wish, usually.

But while Sephiroth was aware that he had an image to uphold whether he wanted to or not, that image was slightly different in actual deployment. If the leaders looked bad, it was a blow to morale. Sephiroth didn't believe in such things until he'd experienced it first hand during his first tour of Wutai. His commander had left a particularly difficult battle looking like an anxious wreck, scared and shaken, injured and dirty. He'd never been so nervous as a SOLDIER as when his leaders weren't on top of their personal appearance, and that was a fact.

For General Sephiroth, the battle had been more of a massacre, and wearing the blood of a weak enemy was hardly a source of pride. He quickly retreated into his tent to clean up. And on the way there, he remained confident and strong, although he was feeling exhausted and resentful of the entire mission.

Nobody could know that, and nobody would. If there was one thing Sephiroth had learned over the years, it was how to keep a stoic demeanor despite his true emotions. Maybe he overdid it, thus the bastardized reputation, but it was easier than putting himself out there and on display. It was Vincent Valentine who taught him why it was so important to do what he always had referred to as man up.

When Sephiroth was six, Vincent had come to visit one afternoon and as usual, found the child in an odd position. This time, he wasn't stuck contorted like a pretzel nor on the receiving end of electroshock therapy – he'd simply been trapped in a bed by the means of wires. He was hooked up by every conceivable body part to a room full of buzzing, blipping machinery that appeared to be monitoring every single function of his body. Sephiroth didn't seem to be in pain or that much discomfort, but he was helplessly bedridden for the time being. He then became greatly upset when he couldn't be unhooked to play with Vincent, and began to cry.

Then, the room of machines all went haywire and noisy with the stress of Sephiroth's system, which only escalated the child's tantrum. The nurses quickly shooed Vincent from the lab. The Turk tried to shake it off, but leaving that little boy crying and calling his name broke his heart. He couldn't sleep at all that night, and the next morning he went back to the labs.

Sephiroth's caretakers immediately gave him guff and for the first time, Vincent had to throw his weight around to be allowed in. Drawing a gun on the staff didn't exactly faze them, they were Shin-Ra employees, after all – but they did put their hands up and stepped to the fucking side when he decided to fire a few warning shots.

Vincent found Sephiroth in the same place, sleeping like a cherub. He almost turned around and left the child in peace, but Sephiroth's fingers twitched slightly in his sleep. The small, vulnerable act drew Vincent further into the room.

He cupped his hand over Sephiroth's little fingers, and spoke softly, "Hey buddy."

Sephiroth drew in breath and opened his eyes, blinking blurrily up at him. He said nothing.

Vincent thought it was because the child was angry with him for leaving. Not the case. In Sephiroth's six-year-old mentality, he associated his crying with Vincent's departure. He kept silent so he wouldn't leave again.

Vincent pulled a chair up beside Sephiroth's bed. "…How are you feelin'?"

" 'M alright," Sephiroth said quietly. "I can't get up to play."

Vincent's heart hurt again. No little kid should ever have to say those words. "I know you're stuck there for a little bit. But hey, I brought you somethin' pretty cool."

Sephiroth's face lit up immediately, "What?!"

Vincent considered buying him a board game, something like Candyland or Hungry Hungry Hippos. Something silly and stupid and bright, something that could be a pin drop of color in the dark lab Sephiroth was stuck in.

But Candyland? Hungry Hungry Hippos…? Vincent knew such a thing would make very little sense to a child like Sephiroth. Not that he lacked imagination, but Vincent could tell Sephiroth sometimes smiled although he didn't get the joke, as it were. He watched family sitcoms, but didn't understand that all the people on the screen were related to each other by blood. He enjoyed cartoons, but didn't understand that they were funny because they were supposed to be impossible – Sephiroth had seen mutant turtles, animals that could talk, and every sort of imaginable ACME-type product in real life. Commercial advertisements were like broadcasts from an alien world; he didn't understand why breakfast was such a big deal, why people would ever have to buy their own medicine, or where to find the groups of kids his own age that always seemed so readily available.

He was a very smart child, but he was being raised under special circumstances. The more Vincent educated him about "normal" life, the more he felt like he was doing a disservice because Sephiroth could not be a part of it. But Vincent couldn't let Lucretia's child grow up without at least a taste of normalcy, of pleasure or sugar or fun. He couldn't let Sephiroth suffer the shock of finally getting outside the lab as a grown man only to find an entire world had been turning without him.

Vincent wanted Sephiroth to grow up, have a life, make a family. He wanted him to be… okay.

As for board games, the closest one that Sephiroth could really, truly relate to would be Operation. The black humor of it almost spurred Vincent to buy a set at the toy store. But then he got an idea that he liked a hell of a lot more: child-size playing cards.

He pulled a chair up to Sephiroth's bedside and dealt them each five cards, then scattered the rest on the bed.

"This game is called 'Go Fish'. Look at your cards, look at the numbers, and ask me if I have any of them. You're tryin' to make pairs, and whoever runs out of cards first wins. Awright?"

Sephiroth nodded. "Okay! Do you have a five? Or a two? Or the letter Q? A ten, or a f –"

"No Seph!" Vincent laughed, and pulled all the cards back and began to shuffle and deal new ones. "You don't tell me what all of your cards are. You only pick one and ask me if I have it."

"Why don't I just tell you all of them? Wouldn't the game go faster?" Sephiroth asked innocently, his young mind already settling into linear, logical lines.

"Because then I'll know exactly what you have, and that'll give me a big advantage. It'll make the game more interestin' to keep secrets, dontcha think? It'll make it last longer."

"So my cards are a secret," Sephiroth reasoned. Secrets meant a longer game, and that meant the longer Vincent would stay and play. After making that association, Sephiroth began to guard his cards like a hawk, his shrewd little pokerface and obsessive following of the rules an endless source of amusement for Vincent.

As Sephiroth grew older, his hands got bigger and he was able to hold regular playing cards instead of the small, colorful ones. The games changed from Go Fish and War, to Gin, then when Sephiroth's hands were big enough to hold a lot of cards – Gin Rummy, then to Spit which was Sephiroth's long time favorite because he was much quicker than Vincent, who may or may not have been letting him snatch the good cards. Then, as he settled into something a lot like maturity, they played Bullshit and Blackjack, which then graduated to Poker.

When Sephiroth was eleven, he broke his legs while doing what eleven-year-old boys do best – really dumb shit. The Red Cross had erected a shiny white tent in the lab to set up shop for the annual company blood drive. It was located in the lab instead of a van so Hojo could monitor who was eligible to give blood and generally breathe down everyone's necks.

It was always a tense day when the Red Cross was around, because that meant keeping the more questionable experiments hidden away – and Sephiroth was the most questionable one of all.

Sephiroth didn't give a fuck about the ethical politics associated with himself, all he knew was that he was strictly forbidden to be seen in the stairs, the lab lift, or the catwalk, thus banishing him to the third floor. On any typical day, Sephiroth felt no real reason to leave his floor of residence, but being told that he couldn't had him aching for the freedom of the lower floors. Especially as he peeked between the railings and saw an ever changing crowd of people scurrying to and fro, crowned by a shiny white vinyl tent of wonders.

Just when he became bored of watching the personnel scurry around, he spotted Vincent's laid-back swagger, apparent from even fifty feet up.

Sephiroth was about to call out, when Vincent's eyes glanced upwards and spotted him. The Turk winked up at him, and Sephiroth managed to slip his skinny arm between the railing and wave.

Then he got an idea.

Indiana Jones was able to jump down from the top of a building onto an awning and simply broke through down to the next, until he safely landed on the ground. The tent downstairs wasn't an awning, but if he broke through he wouldn't hurt himself too badly…besides, he wouldn't exactly be on the lift, catwalk or stairwell now would he?

Before giving it much more thought than that, Sephiroth hopped up onto the chest-high railing of the third floor. His nurse shouted wordlessly, but only after he was already airborne.

He would have been fine if he'd actually landed on the tent.

He didn't. He landed on the floor right next to the tent. Like a cat, he landed right on his feet – but with his legs locked. He remembered at the last minute to let himself crumple naturally to absorb the impact, but it was too late. He fractured his right leg in two places, and very nearly shattered the shin of the left.

For Sephiroth's recovery system, this would have equaled a couple days of bedridden discomfort at worst, but the labs took the opportunity to see how long they could prevent healing. Instead of putting the broken bones in a wrap and letting it mend itself, they had Sephiroth jog several treadmill miles on it daily, preventing the marrow from knitting.

"Why do I gotta do this?" Sephiroth bemoaned to Hojo, who was sipping something chocolaty and glancing over x-rays.

"There are things wrong with you that I can't begin to fix. You're somehow mentally damaged. I can't understand why you do the things you do, and I blame it entirely on the influence of Vincent Valentine," Hojo had explained coolly. "Your mind isn't worth a damn to me anymore, but your body is still comprised of the most advanced engineering on the planet. I gave you everything you have, and you continue to treat it poorly. So show me how far you can walk on those broken legs. My broken legs. Maybe next time you'll remember to take better care of what is mine."

Even the janitor who mopped the floors in the lab knew what Hojo wanted from Sephiroth. He wanted to see some sort of remorse for what he'd done – he'd embarrassed the labs, he had caused a scene, and Hojo had been forced to swallow a certain amount of crow as he batted off the Red Cross volunteers who were oh-so-concerned about the oh-so-beautiful little boy who had hurt himself oh-so-tragically.

It was all the lab could do to avoid a full blown investigation. The fucking do-gooders were getting their pickets ready to protest in front of the goddamn HQ building. Luckily for Hojo, money had a way of silencing even the kindest of souls. But that money had to come from somewhere – namely, the medical lab's budget.

Sephiroth wasn't sorry, though. The fun three story freefall was worth the pain of hitting the floor, definitely! He wasn't too happy about being forced to stay injured, but if it meant being a cripple versus apologizing… he'd jog forever on broken legs. He'd choke to death on the words if he tried to say he was sorry. He'd vomit for days.

On the second day of walking, the nurses took pity and drugged him with untraceable painkillers. Then, running became a colorful wonderland of numb entertainment and profound thoughts about the universe, but lying in bed afterwards was agony. Bull-headed, stubborn, pouty agony. Hojo gave him another opportunity to express any regret he might have had, but Sephiroth would never say he was sorry.

Vincent came to him the weekend following his dramatic jump, assuming wrongly that the kid would be fine by then and ready to catch a new horror movie that had come out, complete with plenty of knifing and probably a titty or two. But Sephiroth was stuck in bed, grumpy and for the first time not exactly in the mood for company.

Vincent closed the door of Sephiroth's room and sat on his bed – there wasn't really anywhere else to be in the tiny little room, after all. After Sephiroth was finished explaining the situation, Vincent had given him a paternal sigh. The sigh only covered up his rage at the labs for keeping Sephiroth in pain, and he only became angrier when he lifted the blanket to look at Sephiroth's legs and found oddly patterned bruises from the broken bone shards pressing from the inside. "…Ya know, maybe you should just say you're sorry. Have him throw you in that tube thing for an hour or so and you'll be fixed up?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "I'm not sorry. And I don't wanna go in the tube."

"Why not, they're supposed to be awesome! Most people say they feel all sortsa refreshed after gettin' out."

"It's cold. And I kinda don't like bein' in it all… yaknow," Sephiroth's voice dropped a notch in volume, "…naked."

Vincent laughed, only because it was the first time he'd ever seen any sort of shyness from Sephiroth about anything. He supposed it might be the age, the awkwardness was started to set in while Sephiroth's arms and legs began to grow at an absurd rate. And Vincent probably wouldn't want a bunch of questionable scientists seeing him naked, either.

"Well, how about some Bullshit?" Vincent suggested, reaching under Sephiroth's bed to retrieve the cards stashed there.

"Nah, Poker's better."

"I didn't bring any candy." It was their usual betting currency.

"That's alright," Sephiroth said, old enough not to complain about Vincent's lack of preparation. But then, Vincent had planned on going to a movie. Sephiroth's heart struck a chord of longing, and he considered just swallowing his pride and saying he was fucking sorry, and suffer being naked in the cold tank for a late evening showing.

He imagined Hojo's self indulgent face upon receiving his apology and even a request for tank time. A request for it. Any request Sephiroth had ever made to the man ended up with it being fulfilled instantly, but followed by severe, often painful repercussions. Sephiroth steeled against the idea and focused on his cards.

"It's easy to tell what you're thinkin'," Vincent mused. "I bet Hojo knows damn well that you want him to take a long walk on a short pier."

"It's not just him," Sephiroth said, putting two cards down and holding out his hand for more. "I just wish I could be like…"

You, was the word Sephiroth wanted to say. But instead he said, "Bruce Campbell."

Vincent smirked, "What's he got that you don't got?"

"He's so cool. He's got a chainsaw arm. And he just does whatever he wants. I'd like that."

"Kids your age don't have that," Vincent said, referring to the wish for freedom, not the chainsaw arm. "They have to mind their teachers, mind their parents. Just like you have to mind the doctors, and mind Hojo. You're still a little guy… ya know?" Then Vincent said in a promise so empty he couldn't even muster up the conviction to act like he believed it, "You're not missin' out on too much."

Sephiroth sighed, and his lower lip twitched in the way that would have signaled a hail of crying if he were still a toddler. Instead he just let out a loud gust of air. "Do you think I'll ever be able to leave here?"

"Sure!" Vincent affirmed whole heartedly. "But right now, you still need someone to take care of you. Then you'll be an adult, and you'll be able to take care of yourself. That's how it is."

Sephiroth looked up from his cards at Vincent, but didn't say what he was thinking. He wondered why Vincent couldn't be the one to take care of him. Maybe because it was a burden, or because it might be expensive. Or because he was a Turk and couldn't spare the time. Or because he probably had girlfriends and buddies and a life, and didn't want Sephiroth to get in the way, which he assuredly would.

He didn't want to cry in front of Vincent at that age, so he called upon his pokerface, which up until that point had been used only to foil Vincent into his card game traps. He smirked his sadness away, and focused on the game. Man up, he thought to himself.

He manned up again the next day when he told Hojo that he regretted any inconvenience to the lab due to his attempt at landing on the blood drive tent, and that he would exercise better judgment in the future. Not exactly an apology, just some simple bullshit words to get the man off of his goddamn back.

It was easier than he thought it would be. He wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

He manned up again when Vincent and Hojo took him to see President Shin-Ra for the first time. Hojo had asked Vincent to come along, as a sort of scapegoat for Sephiroth's mannerisms and behavior. As far as he was concerned, Sephiroth was an extra terrestrial imitating humans, and Vincent had tragically been the one that influenced him most, probably because he was the one who rewarded him the most. Although Vincent had tainted his perfect creation, Hojo still found a way to learn from it.

Next time, he'd better guard his creations.

The President listened while Vincent stated Sephiroth's case, explaining that he needed normal interaction with other boys his own age, he needed to build social skills, and he needed a place to constructively spend his energy. Hojo was all for the idea, simply because he could further test Sephiroth's physical limits, especially with that of materia, something that Hojo wouldn't risk in his precious lab until the boy had formal training. With the right combination of materia and the frightening amount of free will Sephiroth possessed, the boy could quite easily destroy everything they had all worked so hard to create.

"And you also don't wanna give him the materia yet because he could kill himself, right?" Vincent challenged to Hojo through the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing can kill Sephiroth. Least of all himself," Hojo countered as though he were merely sighing the words.

"Not like you haven't tried plenty."

"I wouldn't have to push him as hard as I do if I didn't need to compensate for all the weakness you've instilled in him."

"I'd love to travel back and look at your childhood, doctor. Did you have many weaknesses when you were a kid?"

"That's a foolish question Valentine, and an irrelevant one. Sephiroth is not a… kid," Hojo chuckled the word as though it were something Sephiroth never was.

While the President listened to Vincent and Hojo squabble at each other, he stared at Sephiroth. He was the famed experiment who was supposed to make them all filthy rich, powerful, and omnipotent.

Well – more filthyrich, powerful and omnipotent.

He didn't look like a skull crusher at all. He was just a skinny, albino-looking kid in jeans and a t-shirt, sitting there like a wide eyed goat while Vincent and Hojo did all the talking for him.

"I understand why he needs the academy training," the President interrupted the two men at last, just as Vincent had begun to throw down some seriously colorful language, much to Sephiroth's delight. "I want to hear from his own mouth why he feels he's ready to live and behave like a human."

All eyes turned to Sephiroth. He had never been given such rapt attention in his life, especially not by Hojo. Instead of feeling nervous, he felt himself grow… cocky. His humanity had been under question since he was born, and frankly, he was tired of the discussion. If this man was to be his future employer, then there were some things that Sephiroth wanted to make perfectly clear. "I'm not actin', I am a human. And I promise if you let me go to school, I'll do my best at everything. I'll be just as good as any other cadet – "

"I'm not concerned with you being just as good," the President interrupted. "You're meant to be the best."

"You didn't let me finish. I already am the best," Sephiroth dismissed, and Hojo stuffed his hands in his pockets, his dark eyes flicking between the boy and the president nervously. Vincent just stood watching, his stomach in knots. "But since I have to go through the first year anyways, I'm gonna handicap myself. Hojo's gonna give me performance disabling drugs that'll make me slower during the day, so I can learn with the other cadets. I am the best, and I will be a leader. I'm ready to learn now. I don't want to wait anymore."

Vincent looked blank faced, but felt immensely proud. Hojo did also, but in the way of a robotic engineer watching on in pride at what his creation was capable of doing on its own.

The President mentally churned. Finally, he said, "That's fine, fine indeed. All members of Shin-Ra should be anxious to serve their purpose. You've been given that last name, but don't you dare get it into your head that you're at all valuable to me personally. Not yet, anyways. You mean nothing to me, you do not belong to my family, and you're not getting a red cent when I die. Your Shin-Ra name is a branding. If you try to run, anyone who finds you will return you here. Is that all understood?"

Sephiroth nodded with the soulful, secretive smirk that would one day grace the cover of Timeweek magazine. It was, and would become his trademark political mask, both defensive in its unreadability, and offensive in its cheeky quality. It would someday enflame the loins of a blonde, small town mountain boy – who was at that very moment an innocent seven-year-old, fast asleep on another continent and cuddled up under bed sheets that had a dinosaur print on them.

In Midgar, a thirteen-year-old Sephiroth waited a heartbeat before agreeing. "Yessir."

The President seemed pleased, and very suddenly turned from a red faced miser into a jolly, almost Santa Claus-ish figure. "Personally son, it's a fine arrangement, you starting your training early – and with a handicap! You should get to know the bones of being a cadet just as well as every other boy! I want you just as tired as any other cadet at the end of the day!"

Vincent smiled. Hojo nodded while clasping his hands behind his back. Sephiroth sat up straight in his chair and gave the President a plucky nod. "Yessir!"

"I just have one request from you, Sephiroth."

"Yeah?" he asked, lit up and excited.

"Get Valentine's sidewalk sucking accent out of your mouth."

Sephiroth completely lost his composure. His mouth dropped open in shock as his face burned angrily, but he tried to gather himself. "…Yessir. Yes, sir."

They were all dismissed. Sephiroth begged Hojo to allow him to spend the afternoon with Vincent to celebrate. The day outside was beautiful, and a teasing glimpse of it through the elevator windows was enough to make Sephiroth want to just leap off the top of HQ and fly away.

Hojo straightened up a bit. "Fine, you may take him for the afternoon."

Both the men rejoiced.

"Sephiroth cannot consume any sodium, however."

They slumped slightly, as sodium comprised over a third of their plans.

"And he must be returned before eight o' clock. His initial disabling evaluation will begin first thing tomorrow morning, and he'll need his rest…" Hojo concluded and turned to limp away, his slightly struggled gait only making him that much more detestable.

It would be so easy to kick him over. The innate bully in both men wanted to do nothing more than stomp on his glasses, cut off his ponytail, and take a piss on him. But neither Vincent nor Sephiroth could bring themselves to do so, because he was limping. It was quite the conundrum.

And even if the only food item at the movies that didn't contain sodium were gummy bears, the lowest of the low candy choices on the totem pole, Sephiroth still regarded that night as one of the best of his entire life. It was regrettable that that night was also one of the last times Vincent had ever truly spent real time with him, but on that night they both had never laughed so easily and the future had never seemed so bright.

But it was bright, and he was living a good life. He had an occupation that was incredible beyond his wildest dreams. At the age of 22, he hardly ever had to report or deal directly with President Shin-Ra nor any overbearing medical individuals. He would never have to worry about financial stability as long as he lived. He had good friends, and he was in a temporarily long distance, but incredibly satisfying relationship with a very sexy blonde… who he happened to be madly in love with.

He wouldn't dare ask for more. His recent happiness had done wonders to fill any voids in his heart, but he still wondered about Vincent. He thought about him at the oddest times.

Like now. Sephiroth was so completely consumed by memories that he had completely lost track of how long he had been standing in the ice freezing cold little shower rig. He liked to think that battle, war, and long term deployments had little effect on his mind, but sometimes even he became vacant and melancholy. Coming to awareness, he picked his forehead up off of the wall and began to quickly complete his shower.

When he was almost finished, Genesis yanked the door open. "Are you done yet?"

Sephiroth blinked at him from underneath his soaked hair. "Obviously not."

"Crap!" Genesis shouted, and slammed the door shut.

Sephiroth finished and turned off the water valve, then rubbed his towel over his goosebumped skin quickly and wrapped it around his hips. He opened the door and Genesis was still standing there impatiently, holding his arms out as if he didn't want to touch himself. "I was counseling a junior and he threw up on me!"

Sephiroth laughed as he passed Genesis by on the way to his clothes. "You still coulda knocked."

"I was too damaged. Besides, I'm actually glad you were still in there. And not only because I saw your pristine ass, but because you can help me get undressed."

"No!" Sephiroth laughed.

"Please?!"

"Why?"

"I don't want to touch it!" Genesis whined, referring to the stinky, thick yellow mess all over his clothes.

"You think I wanna touch it?" Sephiroth rolled his eyes and with the tips of his fingers, he gingerly began unsnapping Genesis' soiled red uniform.

They'd become good friends as cadets, grew apart a bit as school went by, and then reunited as if no time had passed during Sephiroth's second tour of Wutai.

Genesis had always been strange, dramatic and extremely spoiled, which made him a good match for Rufus, the filthy-rich spawn of the President. Vincent was constantly assigned to tail after him, which ate up his free time. And then when one of his closest friends began to date him regularly, Sephiroth felt a sickening burn that he couldn't explain.

He supposed it might have been jealousy.

Not that he and Genesis even made sense together! Sephiroth inwardly winced at how forced and strange sex with him would be. How fucking weird it would be to see his composed, pretty face contort with pleasure. Or pain. Or both. How absurd it would be to watch his cock spit all over it.

His fingers tripped over themselves when Genesis suddenly sighed, "How come we've never gotten together?"

Sephiroth snorted. "You're askin' me this while you're covered in puke?"

"No, seriously!" Genesis pouted as he shrugged out of his coat. "Why didn't you ever consider me?"

"You have Rufus. And the rest of the fuckin' city," Sephiroth joked. Genesis wasn't exactly the town whore, but Rufus wasn't just paranoid – the redhead got around. "It never occurred to me. And even if it did… it'd be weird."

Genesis sighed longingly, raising his arms as Sephiroth carefully peeled his shirt off so no puke would touch his hair. "Have our ships already sailed for each other, Seph?"

"I'll pretend I know what that means, and say 'yes'," Sephiroth chuckled, and unzipped Genesis' pants and peeled them down.

Genesis stepped out of them, but seemed truly disappointed. "I suppose I'll have to do as Zack says, and wait until another lifetime to finally get the chance to hide my fist in your beautiful rectum."

Sephiroth frowned as he left Genesis in his underwear and picked up his dirty uniform for cleaning. "…It might be a couple of lifetimes."

"You mean to tell me Cloud has yet to fist you? Have you tried watersports, yet?"

"…No."

"You haven't even pissed on him? Ugh! Your sex life must be so vanilla." Genesis wrinkled his nose. "And I always thought you'd be a kinky little fuck."

"Maybe, maybe not," Sephiroth smiled secretively.

"You do like what you do, though?" Genesis asked as he shamelessly stripped himself down to the core and put his hands on his hips.

"More than like…" Love, Sephiroth thought with a pang of longing in his chest.

"That's all that matters," Genesis nodded. "But frankly, the second I get back to Midgar, Rufus is getting his ankles tied above his ears and his asshole full of candlewax."

Sephiroth held the vomit stained clothes aloft as though he might throw them right in Genesis' face. "Catch."

"You wouldn't!" Genesis howled, already yanking the door of the shower rig open and hiding away inside. Once the door was closed, Sephiroth pitched the heavy load with a satisfying slap of belts and red leather against the metal door.

There was a high pitched scream from inside, followed by Sephiroth's booming laughter. He loved to torture his friends.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud dreamt about walking for hours, and he felt the time pass as keenly as if he had been awake. He walked through the stupid fucking snow of the Northern Crater, every so often stepping clumsily into a softer patch and falling in up to his shins. He'd step out of it, brush himself off and keep going.

It was endless and he was going nowhere, but couldn't stop.

Finally, out of mental exhaustion and boredom, he woke up. There was daylight peeking through the rips and tears in the tent. He was alone, and apparently had slept in.

His eyes hurt with the need to weep out of pure self pity. He was so fucking cold, so fucking miserable. And the first time he'd actually slept late in ages, he spent the entire night trapped in an exhausting, never ending quest of a dream.

He sighed, and saw breath puff out of his mouth in the frigid air.

What was he going to say to Sephiroth?

It wasn't like he'd cheated on his beloved. But guilt ate away at him from all edges, a sickening feeling that he'd betrayed Sephiroth by just wanting to betray Sephiroth – even if it had only been for a moment. Cloud was so angry and upset with his body that he considered cutting his treacherous cock off and sending it to Sephiroth gift wrapped, like Van Gogh sent his fucking ear.

It wasn't even about the jerking off part. Cloud lived on a campus with approximately 1000 teenage boys; every door one opened held a fifty percent chance someone was masturbating behind it. Maybe even two or three people! The gym showers after the last physical class of the day was like synchronized jerk off swim team.

Beating off was no great, sensual mystery to anyone in the army. But Cloud knew there was still plenty of potential for Sephiroth to feel angry, livid, wrathful… hurt.

It sickened Cloud deeply to know something he had done might potentially hurt Sephiroth. The idea of causing that wonderful man pain was unbearable.

"Shit," he hissed and rolled over to find his phone. He checked the time and was momentarily amused to see how late he had slept in. He rolled the freezing phone in his hand, the white surface still pristine and new. He rolled it until he got the nerve to open it, and he looked at Sephiroth's picture – changed from the naked bathroom snapshot to one Cloud had taken of him during their winter break week together.

Sephiroth had been showing him some hand to hand maneuvers in one of the vast pockets of emptiness in the loft. Or rather, he was trying to.

Every single bout ended with Cloud gently pinned to the floor, again and again. Every single time Cloud would wind his legs around Sephiroth with a soft smile that had absolutely no place in a fighting lesson. And despite Sephiroth giving Cloud every possible opening and displaying every weakness, he still wouldn't get the better of him.

It wasn't that Cloud wasn't taking the advice seriously, he was genuinely drinking in every pointer and taking it to heart… the real problem was that Sephiroth wasn't wearing any pants.

He was only wearing a white cotton t-shirt and plain white briefs. Cloud loved the simple t-shirt, it was soft beneath his fingers, and stretched to cling to the hard lines of his lover's body. He also loved every inch of Sephiroth's long, smooth, bare legs that tripped and wrapped around his own. If Jenova really was going to pilot his body for evil, and it was somehow up to Cloud to stop him or else the world should end, all She had to do was dress Sephiroth in this combination of clothes and Cloud would easily be trumped.

Cloud was pinned again, and this time Sephiroth felt that his little blonde opponent had developed an erection. It was glaringly apparent that Cloud wasn't focused in the slightest, and Sephiroth became bemusedly fed up and stomped to the fridge for a drink.

"Heeey, don't go…" Cloud had whined, popping up onto one elbow and watching him strut to the kitchen. "It was just getting interesting."

"You're oversexed," Sephiroth accused.

"You're overly sexy!" Cloud countered as he rolled onto his back and watched Sephiroth from upside down as he drank from a carton of orange juice. Maybe it was just the strange angle of it, or the manly, domestic way Sephiroth leaned on the fridge door as he tilted the carton back. Cloud was so stricken by the image he had pulled his phone from his back pocket (which had stolen prized possession status from his Mp3 player, and was too precious to let out of his sight, even for a sparring lesson) and had taken the picture.

He stared at the photo he'd taken, remembering every detail of that moment.

It had to be more than just irrational teenage hormones. Cloud knew he wanted to be with Sephiroth for the rest of his life. He needed to talk to him and make everything right. He pressed Sephiroth's speed dial and bit his thumb.

After a few rings, a stern, handsome voice picked up. "Well it's about time. You're the one I've been wantin' to talk to all goddamn day."

Cloud straightened a little bit, terrified that Sephiroth might have already found out what happened. "…Really?"

"Of course, baby. You're my mate," Sephiroth easily flirted, and Cloud could just see the charming, slightly dimpled smile on his face. "I've been wantin' to make sure you're okay."

A fresh wave of grief hit him, and he fell over onto the hard, cold ground, softened only slightly by his sleeping bag. "I'm fine. Are you okay? You didn't get hurt or anything, did you?"

"Of course not," Sephiroth snorted. "I heard you got some booboos, though. I also heard that your friend had a big scare and you took care of him. I find acts of heroism awful fuckin' sexy, ya know..."

"You're being too sweet today," Cloud couldn't help but smile bashfully, even though in his mind he argued that Reno wasn't his fucking friend, he was a home wrecking ginger incubus.

"It's my job to be sweet to you," Sephiroth said softly to him.

If it wasn't so cold, Cloud would have wept.

Sephiroth heard a tiny, dry sob though. "…Everything okay?"

"Yesterday just… fucked me up," Cloud muttered, zipping himself entirely up inside his sleeping bag. "…I just wish…"

"What?"

"I wish I could have been with you," Cloud muttered, sounding a lot more bitter than he realized he felt.

"…So you are mad at me about the other day."

Cloud huffed and decided that yes, yes he fucking was! "I understand that you had things you had to do, and that we had a battle the next day, and that you probably haven't slept in months and that you don't have any time to worry about me. But if I was the General, and I saw you after three fucking months, I'd take at least a second for you!" Cloud was seething with misplaced rage. "Maybe I'd even stretch that out into a whole sixty seconds!"

"Cloud – "

"I know everything you're going to say! You have a very important job, and it has to come first. I get it! So don't treat me like some stupid little kid, because I'm not! And don't baby me either, because that's almost worse!" He couldn't stop himself.

"'Kay," Sephiroth said after a moment of silence. Cloud frowned, knowing full well that he was acting like a monumental ass, and was certain Sephiroth was thinking of what a complete and utter prick he was dating.

The truth was, Sephiroth was holding his hand over the phone to block out the sound of his laughter. Cloud was adorable when he was angry.

"…But…" Cloud said slowly, trying to gather his thoughts. "It was still kinda nice just to see you."

"So you're done being pissed off at me, now?"

"Seph, I'm not pissed at you," Cloud said, quite ashamed of himself. "I love you."

"Good. Because we're all going home tomorrow."

Cloud shot straight up in bed. "Are you serious?"

"Yup, Wutai conceded first thing this mornin'. It's all over."

"Are you serious!?" Cloud wailed louder.

"I'm serious," Sephiroth laughed.

Cloud gave a loud shout of victory, "We did it! We won! The Northern Crater is ours now!"

Sephiroth chuckled with him. "Yup, it's all ours. But we sure as fuck don't wanna stay here with it, do we?"

"Hell no!" Cloud cried, and rolled over onto his stomach. "So we really get to go home, now? Just like that?"

"Absolutely. Airships are gonna leave Midgar in about five hours, so they'll be here early tomorrow. You'll be outta here first thing."

"What about you?" Cloud gushed. "When will I see you? Will I get to see you tomorrow?"

Sephiroth's voice straightened out from joyous into a mode of serious planning. "I need to go to a press conference when I get back to Midgar, then there's this dinner thing afterwards that I'm gonna get out of. I wanna eat with you. Then eat you."

Cloud roared in glee, feeling like he could leap out of his skin. "So what should I do tomorrow!? We need a plan!"

"Just go home and rest, chill out. I'll call you when it's all over, and come get you."

"I have your keys!" Cloud cried.

"Fuck, that's right. In that case I'll grab a ride to the apartment, and we can meet there."

"Okay!" Cloud agreed, already planning on having dinner cooked and himself sprawled out naked on the floor.

"Make sure to pack."

"Pack for what?"

"You've got a week off, right? I hope you don't have any plans, 'cause I'm cancellin' 'em for you. Anywhere you wanna go?"

Cloud had managed to forget about his week off upon his return home. There were a few moments in the previous day that he thought he might not be returning home at all. He scratched his head, "I wouldn't mind going out to the club again!"

Sephiroth paused. "I meant like, in the world."

Cloud's eyes shot open. "For real?"

"Yeah, where would you like to spend a few days at? Just you and me."

Cloud's mind traveled to all the romantic and tropical locations on the globe, places he'd wanted to visit and places his mother vowed to spend her honeymoon if she ever married. His mind kept going back to one place, though. "Seph, it might be lame, but… I really just wanna go home with you."

Sephiroth was quiet for a moment, then said with a smile, "That's where we'll go, then. We'll barricade that shit up."

Cloud grinned and let contentment take some of his anxiety away. He was going home, he was going to see his lover, and everything was going to be okay. Cloud didn't relax entirely, because he had not forgotten that the point of the entire conversation was to fess up to his near-brush with infidelity.

He bit his lip and considered the options. He could be honest, potentially upset Sephiroth and spoil what would surely be a heavenly reunion, or he could just… keep his fucking mouth shut. The latter option was extremely tempting. Cloud had lied plenty in his lifetime, but never about anything of real importance.

Cloud's innate goodness wanted to tell the truth, but wondered what purpose it would serve. He hadn't done anything.

Had he? What if he had?

And what if Sephiroth somehow found out about his X – rated conversation with Reno through another source? It's not like SOLDIERs were deaf. If it got back to Sephiroth what had happened and Cloud hadn't come clean, it would look much, much worse than it actually was. And what if the eavesdropper mistook a masturbatory lame-a-thon for actual sex?

Did Sephiroth know him well enough to believe his word over the word of a SOLDIER? Had he earned that much of Sephiroth's trust yet?

And if he had earned Sephiroth's trust, was he abusing it by not being upfront?

Cloud finally decided to just take the leap for honesty. He respected Sephiroth enough to do that. "Seph… I need to tell you something."

"What?" Sephiroth asked, somewhat absently.

Cloud swallowed, not wanting his lover to misunderstand a single word that was about to be said. "Could you stop whatever you're doing for a sec. Please? Something weird happened…"

"I'm listenin' babe," Sephiroth offered after a moment of rustling around.

Cloud closed his eyes. "Okay. Last night, Reno and I were in my tent – "

"Whoah," Sephiroth immediately interrupted. "Who's Reno? And why the fuck was he in your tent?"

Cloud squeezed his eyes shut. Sephiroth's immediate, sharp tone had caught him completely off guard. He had said too much to back out, though. "R-Reno is my friend…sort of. He's the one who was hurt yesterday. And he was in m-my tent because we were both so tired, we just didn't want to have to build our own tents. We were just sharing..."

Cloud hadn't realized just how bad that actually sounded in and of itself until he had said it out loud. He heard Sephiroth shift on the other end of the line, and let out a small breath before continuing, "Anyways. Well, what happened was…"

"You fucked him."

"God, no!" Cloud cried, shocked numb. "Not even close! He made a pass at me last night, but nothing happened! I just wanted to… I thought I should tell you."

Sephiroth said nothing at first, then carefully asked. "And that's all that happened? He made a pass, you said no and that's all?"

Cloud spoke nervously. "Believe me, Seph. I don't want anyone else... I don't want to make you feel like you can't trust me and I don't want you to think this is a bigger deal than it is."

Sephiroth was silent.

"C'mon, please say something," Cloud implored.

"I'm just…" Sephiroth began slowly after a moment, then paused. He was torn down the center of himself; half of him seeing red with anger and territorial jealousy, and the other half was almost understanding that things sometimes happened when men were crammed together for periods of time. But this was his man in particular, and one that he had been aching for. He felt almost foolish for how strongly he felt about Cloud, if he was the sort of guy who'd sleep in a tiny tent next to just anybody.

But the thing that was killing Sephiroth, was that fact that Cloud was hiding something. He could hear it in every word he spoke. There was something he didn't want to tell, and was trying clumsily to steer Sephiroth away from it.

The General feared the worst.

When he spoke again, his tone was confident and business-like. "I knew when I first started this, I knew that there was a really good chance of one of us fuckin' up. I just didn't think it'd be so soon."

Cloud gasped. "Sephiroth, I told you nothing happened –"

"I'm supposed to believe that?" Sephiroth asked, a hollow, angry chuckle spiking across the line.

"Yes!"

"Well, I don't."

"Why not!?"

"Because I know you're lyin'."

"I'm not!" Cloud roared.

"Cloud Strife, you lie to me all the goddamn time. You're fuckin' terrible at it, too. You think I don't know when you stretch the truth? You think I can't tell? You think I'm fuckin' stupid?"

"No!" Cloud sobbed dryly, his mind unable to come up with anything at all to say. This conversation had taken a turn straight to hell.

"I lied to you a lot at first, but I fuckin' admitted all of it. You know how hard that was? You don't even understand how I… Christ! Don't you know?" Sephiroth's voice was beginning to steadily rise, and Cloud began to pant in terror.

He searched his mind, trying to think of any reason at all Sephiroth would assume he was lying. He wasn't… but he was omitting something. "I didn't kiss him, I didn't touch him, it was too dark to even see him! We just – "

"You just what? What did you just do, Cloud?"

"We… we jerked off," Cloud finally confessed. "Not touching each other, not watching, just… in the same tent. That's the truth, Sephiroth. I swear to fucking sweet holy baby crucified Jesus."

"I told you at the start that you were mine," Sephiroth murmured quietly, which was far worse than the shouting. "If you don't think you can handle being mine, and being away from me from time to time, let's end this right now."

"You know I don't want that," Cloud said, trying to remain calm and mature despite the uncontrollable cracks of his voice. "I know I messed up… but I think you're overreacting!"

"Do you?" Sephiroth said thoughtfully. "Let's pretend I just told you that I circle jerked with Genesis. How would you feel about that?"

Cloud closed his eyes and let himself fall against the ground inside his bag. "…I'd feel like shit. But I would try my hardest to understand. And I would," Cloud choked," keep on loving you just the same."

"So you called me all pissed off because I couldn't talk to you the other day," Sephiroth thought aloud. "You made me feel like I needed to make somethin' up to you, so I fuckin' trip over myself to try an' make you happy… then you tell me you fucked yourself in front of some stupid kid last night? I'm done. We're done."

"Don't say that!" Cloud begged. "Please –"

"I said we're done. I'm glad you've been fuckin' around in your tent with some other brat, gettin' your rocks off, Cloud," Sephiroth said, disgust seething in his voice. "I'm glad you're doin' that while I've thought about you every… I'm done bein' your bitch. I'm not even gonna give you the fuckin' satisfaction of knowing how much I lo – …"

Cloud paused, speechless. Stricken absolutely speechless.

So was Sephiroth, apparently. After a few moments of just breathing in each other's ears, Sephiroth finally said, "You gave me… so much. The best things I've ever gotten."

Then Sephiroth hung up.

Cloud clamored out of his tent, and the first thing he did was vomit the small amount of food he'd eaten the prior day. He heaved until he was only sobbing up bile.

The next thing he did was search for Reno. Cloud found him laughing beside the midday campfire, jovially placed between a junior SOLDIER and Kevin, who Cloud hadn't seen since he boarded the plane to the Crater.

When he got on that plane, he thought he was going to see Sephiroth when he landed. Now, he'd never see Sephiroth again.

Scratch that, he'd see him plenty. But he wasn't ever going to see Sephiroth again with his arms open, waiting to hold him and accept him and keep him warm. He was never going to touch him, or kiss him, or sleep beneath him, pressed into the mattress to the point of near-discomfort that was so well worth it.

He was going to live like Sephiroth and Vincent Valentine, near but not together, hurt and never mended. He'd hurt Sephiroth! He'd undone everything.

And it was all Reno's fucking fault.

Cloud was going to kill him.

Reno's eyes found him approaching, and widened a bit. That angular, demonic ginger home wrecking face turned towards him, and those shapely, come guzzling lips parted and he said, "…Yo Clo – "

That was all he said.

Cloud was actually shocked at the distance Reno flew backwards. His air time was almost a full second, and he landed in a pile of limbs. He began to collect himself for either defense or retaliation when Cloud fell on top of him. He grabbed Reno's face between his fingers and punched him again, this time seeing it, feeling it, experiencing his knuckles sinking into Reno's handsome face to the bone.

He hit Reno again, punching the side of his head, earnestly attempting to break his skull in. Reno was hard headed, literally. Cloud's knuckles split open before his eyes and his blood mixed in with Reno's hair.

He snorted like a bull, the red and the pain just making him that much angrier, but also that much more relaxed in his decision that he was about to commit a murder.

He registered pain near his ribs, but it was only a sting, a minor irritation. Later he'd realize little Kevin, who was trying to get him off of Reno to no avail, was kicking him repeatedly.

Cloud took Reno's face and began to attempt to gouge Reno's eyes out. Reno was able to capture his fingers and prevent them from sinking all the way into his sockets, but they still dipped into the sensitive orifices with wriggling, malicious intent.

It wasn't until inhumanly strong arms wrapped around his waist that Cloud realized that what was happening wasn't merely a thought, but reality. He'd tried to kill Reno. And now the redhead was barely conscious.

Cloud heard Chuckles screaming in his ear as if a television had just come off of mute. "– hell are you doing!? Cloud!"

Cloud slumped against Chuckles, all of his will to stand draining as Reno coughed and blood splashed up from his throat. Someone rushed to Reno and Cured him immediately. Cloud watched his eyes refocus and fixate on him.

"You attacked an unprepared comrade," Chuckles informed him like a cop reading him his rights. "You've got two choices. We can settle this right now; I hold you and let him have three clear swings at you. Or, if you'd rather make it official, we'll report you and you'll be held in camp prison until we get back to Midgar, where formal proceedings will begin."

"Let him hit me," Cloud immediately chose, as if he even had a choice.

Reno frowned. He stepped up to Cloud somewhat half heartedly, and clocked him across the face once, twice, and three times. There were three thick, satisfying whaps of hard fist upon flesh, and Cloud's ears rang and buzzed in response to each one. He tasted blood inside his mouth, and swallowed enough to make his stomach turn, but didn't dare complain, not even in his own mind.

Chuckles let him go, and caught him again when Cloud began to slump weakly, and set him on his feet.

"Apologize," a SOLDIER Cloud didn't know urged like a kindergarten teacher.

Cloud looked up at Reno miserably. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too," Reno nodded, and it was clear in his tone that he was apologizing for more than just the fight.

"It never happened," Chuckles stated, then turned away from the scene and urged everyone else to do the same. Reno stared at him for a moment before he turned back to the campfire, followed along by a few busybody SOLDIERs who were trying to get the full scoop. The rest of the spectators dispersed, happy to be going home and not caring about a little bit of teenage drama.

Zack was the only one that stayed, and Cloud almost wished he hadn't. He raised his eyes and found Zack's with their usual friendly, familiar blue light. He then threw an arm around Cloud's shoulders, half supporting him. "Walk with me."

Cloud did, only because he didn't have anything else to do. His heart felt too broken to continue beating. He let himself be guided, and after a few minutes of walking away from camp and into the nothing whiteness of the Crater, he actually found himself feeling a bit better, almost as if he could erase himself in the snow.

"I heard what happened last night," Zack said finally, shattering that illusion.

Cloud wasn't shocked. Public shame was the story of his life thus far, and the trend didn't seem to be receding at all. "I…"

"Look. You're a big guy, you've made it pretty obvious that you can take care of yourself and make your own decisions… I shouldn't butt in, I just…" Zack hesitated. "I wasn't trying to listen in on you. But I've just been sticking so close to you, I'm used to looking out for you. I heard you start to say 'no' a lot, so I kind of paid attention. You're okay, right?"

Cloud looked up at him in surprise at that. "Huh…?Yeah, of course I'm okay."

"I thought maybe it ended well… but since you just beat the living shit out of Reno, I guess maybe it didn't…?"

Cloud blushed deeply at Zack having heard how it "ended". "Everything's… alright. I'm just…"

Cloud needed to be held so badly that he gave Zack a rape of an embrace. He'd been needing to feel someone for so long, and the dark haired hunk was the only one in sight.

Zack didn't know what to do with Cloud sobbing dryly and clutching to him. He wrapped his arms around him and jostled him a bit, trying to shake some joy into him. "You shook up from yesterday? You want something? We've got plenty of happy pills in the medical kit."

"That sounds awesome," Cloud hiccupped as Zack shook him a little bit and pulled him, continuing their walk. He finally managed to get his emotions under control, when very suddenly, the pain and tightly swollen feeling throughout his face and torso vanished. He looked up at Zack and sniffed curiously. He wasn't expected to receive a cure since he had acted like a big fathead bully.

But Zack only smiled down at him. "Gotta keep you pretty for Seph, he'd kill me if he knew I let you walk around with a huge black eye."

Cloud stopped walking. "Zack… I think I might have ruined things with…"

"With Reno? No way, you'll still be friends. Me and Seph beat the shit out of each other regularly, it's almost like our…Cloud?"

Cloud's face had begun trying to cry for the umpteenth time. Zack said his name softly, curiously. He couldn't respond to Zack, only hung his head in complete and utter defeat and misery.

"Cloud? What is it, man?"

"I ruined everything with Seph…" Cloud finally managed to squeeze out.

"No way! I mean, I don't think you cheated, nothing to be guilty about. As long as you just get past it and definitely, definitely do not tell him… oh fuck… you told him, didn't you?"

Cloud nodded helplessly. "We're done! He said we're done!"

Zack pursed his lips as his eyebrows scrunched together in thought. Without another thing to do, he scratched the back of Cloud's head slowly. "Why the hell did you tell him..?"

"I had to!" Cloud wailed. "I felt awful… I just wanted him to tell me it was alright, that we were alright. He obviously didn't feel that way. "

"Cloud. That was a mistake –"

"I can see that, now!"

Zack frowned at all the drama. "Look, I've spent a lot more time with Sephiroth than I have with you. And I know for a fact that he's never been in a position like yours. Mainly because of who he is, nobody would try to pull that shit on him. You're in a different position because you've got no rank and… well, you're cute."

Cloud leveled a glare. Zack ignored it and kept on with his point. "So that just means that you need to be more careful. You have to keep a better eye out for yourself and for uh… your fucking virtue, I guess. Do you really think it was such a hot idea to go sharing a tent with some guy?"

Cloud pursed his lips. Zack had a point. "I guess it was kind of naïve."

"Like I said, it was just a mistake. I heard everything. I can talk to him."

A ray of hope shined through Cloud's soul, but it was brief. "…No. I don't want to fix things through you. I want to fix them myself."

Zack grimaced. "Uh, Cloud. That might be harder than you think."

Cloud closed his eyes and threw back his head in misery. "Trust me, I've never felt worse or more embarrassed in my entire life. Whatever else he has to say to me, I can take it now."

Zack snapped his fingers. "Don't leave him alone, then. Beg, cry, plead and just don't get off of his back until he listens to you. That's what I do."

Cloud actually smiled a little at that. "So you think it's a good idea to call back? Even if he hung up on me?"

"Money says he's waiting by the phone, just dying for you to call back," Zack grinned.

Cloud was already pulling his phone out of his pocket.

Zack pulled his head into a hug and kissed his spikes. "I like you two together. Even if it's only been for a little while in this lifetime… it's just the way it's supposed to be."

Cloud gazed up at Zack. "…We were together in another life?"

Zack shrugged a shoulder. "Together is an understatement. Last time you two were like a walking baby factory. Seph loves kids to death and so do you, but towards the end you got really fat and bitter. I'm guessing you're a guy in this lifetime because you were tired of churning them out."

Cloud let himself giggle at that, simply because it just felt so goddamned true. Numerous times he'd turned his nose up at the thought of baby production, glad as hell he wasn't equipped to do such a thing. Having babies sounded wonderful. But having babies sounded like a slice of hell.

And with a smile finally in place on Cloud's face, Zack departed with a feeling that his job was done.

Cloud took his phone out, half expecting it to be damaged by his scuffle through the snow. He shook his wrists, trying to get rid of his nerves, and then speed dialed Sephiroth.

The General picked up immediately… a little too immediately. "If you're gonna bother me all day, I'm turnin' my phone off."

Cloud crossed his arms and swallowed any amount of hard headed pride he might have been harboring. "…Please forgive me."

This was not what Sephiroth had been expecting to hear. At all. He was expecting a minimalization of the situation, or maybe groveling or perhaps whining teary eyed pity party.

But forgiveness was not something he had been anticipating. Something arrogant in his mind told him that he shouldn't, only to preserve the confidence and self worth that he'd fought for since he was a child. But a greater, larger, and far deeper part of himself wanted very badly to forgive, destroy the kid who tried to touch Cloud, then forget.

Cloud let the silence spin out as long as Sephiroth needed it to. He closed his eyes when it stretched beyond mere consideration. But he was stuck on repeat, he had no other words, nothing else to say. "Forgive me."

"Why should I?" Sephiroth asked, almost childishly.

Love was the most logical reason, but its currency wasn't useful in this conversation. Cloud tried for something else. Something he hoped carried a bit more realistic weight. "Because I am yours. You mean more to me than anything ever has. You make me want to be a better person, and you've inspired me to do everything that I've ever done that matters. I didn't mean for anything like that to happen, and I didn't forget about how much I love you for a moment. Please forgive me."

"…Cloud," was all Sephiroth could say.

"Sephiroth?" Cloud said quietly.

He huffed on the other end of the line impatiently, then the sound melted into a considering sigh. "Run the whole thing by me again."

Cloud screamed into his phone in anguish, although it was also edged in black humor. "I already told you what happened! I don't wanna say it again because then you're going to get mad and not love me anymore!"

Sephiroth just laughed.

Not because anything was funny, but only because he felt so tired and homesick, and then elated at the news of finally going home, and then so hurt at the concept of Cloud with another person, and then just so angry, and then so upset when Cloud didn't immediately call back, and now so confused at what he should be feeling now… that the only thing he could do to prevent himself from weeping was to laugh. "Just… tell me again what happened. No fibbing, and no sugar coating."

Cloud snorted. "The idiot tried to get me to sleep with him. I didn't, obviously."

"Did you kiss him?" Sephiroth asked carefully.

"No," Cloud said firmly.

"Okay..." Sephiroth decided. "But you fucked yourself in front of him."

"I wouldn't take it that far," Cloud clarified. "It was more like… Did you ever rub one out in a public bathroom when there are a lot of people around? Maybe some douche bags talking and a guy in the next stall taking a smelly dump? But you're just so wound up that you need to just do it even though it doesn't even feel that great?"

Sephiroth actually laughed a little bit at that, genuine instead of helpless. "Maybe when I was a desperate little kid."

"Thanks," Cloud said dryly. "But it was like that. He was there, but we weren't doing it together. I was thinking about you, wishing I could be with you. I hope this sounds like the truth to you dear, because it is."

It did sound like the truth, because it was. "Why didn't you just tell me this to begin with?"

"I dunno, Seph… maybe because I was trying to make it sound not so bad, and only made it sound worse. I'm sorry it happened... it didn't have anything to do with him. He's an asshole! I don't even like him!"

"Ah," Sephiroth scolded gently. "That's a little fib right there."

Cloud blushed. "Well… God, Seph. Don't tell me you don't look at people. Like Genesis, for example."

"This isn't about me," Sephiroth laughed again, suddenly enjoying this conversation a lot more. It was beyond cute that Cloud was jealous over Genesis' strange, asexual presence in his life. He took satanic delight in saying, "Well, I might have a confession to make also. I did undress Gen out of a vomit-covered uniform last night."

Cloud's ears turned red. "You what!? I didn't even see Reno and you kicked me to the curb! I have every right to just…!"

"Just what?" Sephiroth smiled.

"Just…ask what he looks like naked?" Cloud admitted.

Sephiroth laughed at that. "He's standard and boring and nothing at all like you."

Cloud rolled his eyes but couldn't help but dig his toe into the snow flirtatiously. "I'm sorry for making you think I was lying to you."

Sephiroth sighed patronizingly. "I'm sorry for bein' a big asshole and overreacting."

"I'm sorry for dropping a load without you," Cloud ventured to joke.

"I'm sorry for not being there to catch it," Sephiroth said back.

Cloud smiled and moved to brush his hair out of his eyes, and was surprised to find blood on his fingers. Zack's cure didn't remove the evidence of his fight. "Oh, Seph, you're going to be so disappointed in me. I got a black eye and my lip busted open and my ribs cracked –"

"Who the fuck gave you a black eye?" Sephiroth immediately snapped.

"Reno did. I beat his ass just now," Cloud said quietly, not at all proud of this fact. "I guess I hulked out or something after you hung up on me."

"He hit you?" was all Sephiroth was fixated on.

"You should see what I did to him, don't worry about it. It's making me feel kind of manly," Cloud smiled, although hollowly.

Sephiroth swallowed back his new anger at someone having the nerve to hit Cloud's angelic face. He knew all about wanting to feel manly, and he also realized that that particular feeling didn't come to Cloud Strife as often as he might have liked. Sephiroth decided to let him have this fight, but Reno would not go unpunished for his transgressions. He was already cooking up a plan for revenge. "As long as you're alright."

"I'm fine, Zack fixed me. So c'mon. I want to go home tomorrow and you've got tons to do before then, right? You should really stop slacking and get your hot ass back to work."

There was a clear smile in Sephiroth's voice. "…Build your own fuckin' tent tonight."

Cloud blushed at the sheer stupidity his actions displayed. "Yes, sir… Do you forgive me?"

"Why do you always ask me such obvious questions?"

"Because I love the sound of your voice!"

"Don't get too cheeky," Sephiroth warned. "I'm still not entirely happy with you."

"I'll make you happy," Cloud murmured earnestly. "That's all I want to do."

"You usually do a pretty good job."

"Forgive me already."

"I could do that…" Sephiroth slowly decided, and then snorted. "Fuck. I'm not even trying to pretend that you're not… the only one for me."

Cloud moaned and closed his eyes. "I promise." He wasn't sure what he was promising, but it was the only thing he could say.

"…Maybe someday this'll be funny."

Cloud hiccupped with relief. It wasn't only Sephiroth who had an eject button, anymore. With a little more practice at earnestly smooth talking himself out of bad situations, maybe he could find the wisdom not to get into them in the first place.

He prayed so.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The happy pills that Zack had mentioned contained a SOLDIER dose of Valium.

He broke one in half when Cloud returned to camp after his conversation with Sephiroth, still shaky, still a wreck, but at least not attacking anybody.

Cloud took the half pill, then managed to swallow a few bites of food before passing out like a corpse. Zack carried him back to his tent and tucked him in.

The SOLDIERs all wanted to know what had gotten little Cloud so furious, but for once in his life Reno kept his big mouth shut. He didn't want word to spread that he'd borderline molested Cloud Strife, the camp pet, and Sephiroth's one true fucking love, apparently. He inwardly hoped Cloud would be smart enough not to tell the General about it, because he was getting mighty nervous about facing some of his legendary wrath. Plus he didn't want Rude to ever find out that he was a horny lech when faced with the right circumstances. The two of them had already had their fair share of issues.

After swallowing the tablet, the next thing that Cloud was consciously aware of was that he was buckled into an airship seat. He looked dazedly to one side and found Zack there. He looked to his other side and found Max.

Max noticed himself being looked at, and did something peculiar. Slowly… so slowly… he spread his fingers out and waved them in front of Cloud's eyes.

It was the most amazing thing Cloud had ever seen. He lost his focus and let his head fall back against the seat.

He was incredibly thirsty, and there was a can of soda opened and sitting in the end of Max's armrest. Without a care, Cloud lifted it up and proceeded to almost spill it all over himself. Max caught it just in time, and there was some sort of booming, slow noise that Cloud would later realize was laughter. Then, the can was helpfully placed at his lips, and he took a much needed drink.

Cloud eventually returned to reality from the land of prescription drugs, and just in time to be terrified as the airship landed. He clutched his seatbelt, having had no time at all to become used to the feeling of once again being in the air, because he had simply woken up there. It was like waking up from sleep because you were hot to find that you were actually on fire.

Cloud decided that he absolutely hated to fly, and that he'd take more drugs before getting on a ship, next time.

They landed safely of course. He peeked out of the window and saw that there was a small crowd of people waiting.

He took his stuff and moved into the line off of the ship. When he crossed from the air conditioned cabin out to the warm sunshine, he took a moment to close his eyes and breathe in air that didn't freeze his lungs and nose. Spring was in full swing in Midgar, and the humidity caused his long johns to almost immediately cling damply to his thighs.

He'd never felt so exhilarated to get swamp ass before.

He strutted off of the ramp, hoping vaguely for a tall, beautiful, sorely missed somebody, but spotted Cam in the little cluster of people instead. There were some gussied up ladies there to greet their SOLDIER lovers, families and classmates to welcome home the school aged boys, and a few press photographers snapping pictures.

Cloud grinned and trotted up to Cam and threw his arms around his shoulders. "Did you miss me!?"

Cam indulged him in a manly bro grab. "No. You ain't been gone dat fuckin' long, ya know."

"It feels like forever to me…" Cloud sniffed, and rejoiced in the fact that his tear ducts were defrosted, and let an avalanche of salty water run down his cheeks. Swamp ass and a face full of ugly tears – it felt so good to be back home.

"Cloud, ya alright...?" Cam asked softly.

"Yeah I'm fine," Cloud whispered before collecting himself. It was too late, though, a reporter had snapped a picture of him crying like a fat baby.

"Hey! You're General Sephiroth's cadet lover, aren't you!? Why isn't the General here to greet you? Did you see him in action at the Crater?"

Cloud opened his mouth to reply, but was having trouble decided which of the rapid-fire questions he should answer first, when noticed something. The reporter had no accent. Cloud's ears were so used to hearing Midgar slang or Junon propriety or any combination thereof, that the absence of staccato-accented words caused him to take pause.

"You're from Nibelheim?" Cloud smiled curiously, wiping his face dry.

The reporter looked a bit off guard, seeming to tilt his head at Cloud's voice as well. For two Nibelheim natives to run into each other was a rare thing. "Aye, brother! I didn't realize you were from the motherland!"

Cloud grinned and nodded. "This is my first year away from home."

"Your first year and you're already coming back from a successful mission in the treacherous Northern Crater." The reporter cooed narritively and snapped another picture of Cloud for the hell of it. "What's your last name?"

"Strife," Cloud moaned, ready to catch some grief.

The reporter let out a bawling laugh. "Must be April Strife's son! I can see the resemblance. Your mother's a lovely little piece when she's not speaking. In fact, the one time I saw you, you were just a little lad walking along on the bar at the corner pub!"

Neither of them saw anything wrong with this statement.

They chatted for a moment while Cam's jaw hung loose, and he tried to keep up with what was actually being said. The two men spoke loosely with one another, completely lost in their own private cultural phenomenon.

"Tell your mother that Simon gives his best," said the reporter, who was apparently Simon. "One more photo? Maybe actually be ready for it this time, champ?"

Cloud gave a smile and a cheeky salute, and the reporter was satisfied, and left to snap photos of teary eyed children clinging to their returning fathers. Just when Cloud wondered where Zack was, he spotted him kissing Aerith. Well, not so much kissing as sucking her soul out through her face. Cloud just smiled and found the rest of his small group of SOLDIERs reunited with their loved ones.

Chuckles had a family, but no lover or children. Max was the father of a little girl, and his wife stood apart from him watching father and child kiss and hug happily, but with no spark of personal relief to see him in her own eyes. Cloud thought that perhaps he was a divorcee, or maybe just a baby daddy. Other SOLDIERs Cloud had gotten to know were wrapped up in their own personal reunions.

Reno was currently scooped up by a tall, brawny, dark skinned young man in sunglasses and a severe black mohawk and two arms full of tattoos. They caught each other's eye, and Cloud gave him a genuine smile. Reno only pushed his face into Rude's neck and enjoyed his boyfriend's presence. Lucky bastard.

Cloud turned and hooked his arm around Cam's neck, happy to have his best friend there to greet him, even if his family and lover were not. He'd see all of the above soon enough!

Then he felt his stomach go into knots. He was going to see Sephiroth this very night! He was going to touch him, feel him, and more than likely get on his knees and beg for forgiveness. That was fine with him. After three months, doing anything on his knees in front of Sephiroth sounded just fantastic.

The two walked through the airship corridor and out onto the Midgar base. The HQ building was tiny in the distance, and the field where SOLDIERs and army normally trained was empty. They crossed it leisurely, taking their time as they made their way towards the academy while Cloud told Cam every moment of notable events. He told him about the flight with Zack, about the boredom of downtime, about the endless marching and meeting up with Reno. He told Cam every moment of the battle, of drumming, of almost being killed time and time again, about the look in Reno's when death was at it's closest, all of it. The one thing he skipped however, was the most difficult fight of all – the fight against his own stupid hormones. But they had arrived back at the dorm by that time.

All over the campus, Junior SOLDIERs were returning to their friends and regaling everyone with their own individual tales of heroism. Nobody approached Cloud, because a drummer boy's role was far less thrilling than that of a sword wielding Junior SOLDIER, or even a helicopter co-piloting, bomb dropping, message relaying Junior Turk. Cloud would have been damned tempted to stop and listen to some of them, but he was just sick to death of it all.

Their dorm room was tiny, messy, and covered in Cam's clothes, but the little space looked like a palace to Cloud. He fell onto his bed, far from tired or even relaxed, but he groaned at the luxurious feel of his springy, squeaky mattress and the pillowy comforter.

"Daddy!" Psycho rejoiced, and pounced onto his back. Cloud's eyes shot open, because the weight of the kitten felt far more substantial than when he'd left. He looked over his shoulder and his mouth fell open.

"Psycho! You got huge!" He rolled over and Psycho flitted off of his back and then pounced onto his chest, his four paws sinking into his flesh.

"He did?" Cam asked obliviously.

Cloud rubbed Psycho's ears. "Don't you have eyes? He's practically doubled in size!"

"You callin' me fat?" Psycho demanded in a distracted sort of way as Cloud's fingers rubbed his favorite spot under his chin. "Goddamn… bastard…"

Cam shrugged. "He looks tha same ta me."

"You've seen him everyday," Cloud pointed out, and rubbed the cat roughly on top of his head, messing up his mane before smoothing it out. "As a matter of fact, he could fit into my hands when we first came here. Look at him now!"

"He ain't changed," Cam insisted. Cloud wondered how he could possibly have been so blind, then he realized that once Psycho grew big enough, he was going to begin his own training. Maybe Cam was scared of letting the kitten grow up.

"Hm. I guess he isn't that much bigger…" Cloud smiled as Psycho circled around on his chest and laid down, almost covering the span of him.

"I gots outta first period to meetcha, but I need ta run to second," Cam announced begrudgingly, and rose off of Cloud's bed to begin stripping off his clothes and putting on his uniform.

Cloud averted his eyes and focused on Psycho, smiling as the expressive brown eyes rolled with pleasure as his favorite kitty spots were scratched. He gloated, "I get a whole week off!"

"Aw, yeah!" Cam remembered, making a sloppy tie. "You gonna do anythin'?"

"I dunno. Hopefully stay at Seph's for a few days."

Hopefully.

Cam was lacing his boots. "Didja call yer mom, yet?"

Cloud's face went blank. He hadn't called, let alone truly thought about his mother in days, possibly weeks. "I… did not. But hey, maybe I won't have to, right?"

Cam tucked his books under one arm. "She's gonna find out eventually, dude. Will ya feed Psychopath?" He slammed the door behind him, then opened it. "There's a big dorm party at da President buildin' tomorrow night fer everyone. You goin'?"

Cloud winced. He'd had his fill of dorm parties in Sephiroth's absence. They were a shallow, fun distraction, but there was only so much beer pong he could get excited about. "Probably not."

"It's your party, technically!" Cam wailed, shaking his hair then combing it with his fingers – a straight man's version of grooming. "You gotta go!"

"Okay Cam, you can either go to another stinky dorm party, or you can make sweet love to your girlfriend who you haven't seen in eighteen thousand hours. Which would you choose?"

"Well… fuck. But think about it!" Cam dismissed and slammed the door behind him.

Then he opened it again, rushed to the bedside to bestow a kiss on Cloud's forehead that only lasted half a heartbeat, but still burned both of their cheeks up with happy embarrassment. "'M glad yer back, Cloud."

"Me too, Cam…" he said carefully, trying not to let the tears gathering in his eyes slip free.

Cam shifted on his feet in Cloud's swimming vision, and joked, "I need bromance in my life!"

Cloud stuck out his tongue and Cam then left with a wide smile, this time for good.

Cloud was not tired, not at all. But somehow lying in his own bed, he managed to quickly fall asleep, his hands idly petting Psycho until they slowed, then stopped.

He woke up a few hours later. He snorted in surprise at his narcoleptic behavior and brushed Psycho off of his stomach so he could reach into his pocket, and dialed Sephiroth. It went straight to voicemail, and he closed his phone with an unsurprised grunt.

Psycho trotted around between his feet as he made his way to the bathroom. He grimaced at his own reflection as he stood before the toilet to relieve himself – he was in poor condition. His hair was oily, dirty and limp, his skin was bone dry, and he could literally smell his own funk.

He peeled his clothes off, gleeful when his poor, abused balls didn't retract halfway up his spine like they had been for the past couple of weeks when he dared to remove his pants.

Once naked, he took an assessing look at himself. It was becoming easier to picture the sort of man he was going to become. Since he was a kid he'd always dreamt of being a superhero beefcake, but was giving up that dream in place of a better one. A long, narrow, streamlined sort of man wasn't a bad thing to be.

He turned around and looked at his better side. Not much had changed there. It was as tight as it had always been, but thankfully his ass was still squeezable and round despite three weeks of a nearly nonfat diet.

Thank God for small favors.

Bored of looking at himself, Cloud stepped into the shower, holding the door open for Psycho to trot in. Perched in his dry little corner, he curled up and watched as Cloud scrubbed every conceivable inch of himself. No area was too unimportant to wash, as one never knew where Sephiroth's tongue might travel. Between his fingers and toes, behind his ears, and every centimeter of his groin and ass were covered in bubbles and rinsed to perfection. He washed his hair, getting rid of the frigid weather's effects and conditioning to regain its former shiny softness.

He stood in front of his closet for a long while, trying to decide what attire would be best for the evening. He thought about his new red pants, but decided against them. He thought about some tight jeans and a simple t-shirt, but decided against that as well.

He stood there, tapping his fingers in the closet door when something occurred to him.

Sephiroth was going to be expecting him at his apartment. He, Genesis, Angeal and several other military dignitaries were all going to make public addresses, hold a press conference, and then possibly be forced to stay for dinner.

It might be close to fucking midnight before they were finally together.

He continued drumming his fingers on the closet while his brain formed an idea. It was probably stupid and potentially impossible, and there was a possibility of it backfiring somehow…

Cloud reasoned that if Genesis was going to make an address, there was a high probability that Rufus would also be in attendance. The President's son owed him one for delivering Genesis' letter. Even if Cloud had done it out of the goodness of his heart, there was no blame in bringing it up if Rufus refused to take him along.

He wanted to surprise Sephiroth. Well, ambush was a more appropriate term.

As good as he knew he looked in tight red Gucci jeans, they just wouldn't cut the mustard for the occasion. Cloud pulled out a newish, clean cadet uniform. He dug though his shoes and found a pair of combat boots that he hadn't worn yet, having broken in the other pair to comfortable perfection. But comfortable equaled scuffed and dirty, and the rubber was now brick stiff from the frozen Northern weather.

He put on his uniform with as much care as he'd used to bathe, he knotted his tie perfectly and even donned the stupid little drum beret. He figured if he was in full uniform, he wouldn't look so out of place. And it also showed a bit of respect for the events that had happened at the Crater. He was a regular veteran, after all!

A veteran. That notion was made of erections.

After making his final, painstaking preparations on his hair, he left his room and walked to Shin-Ra HQ to pick up Sephiroth's tank.

Cloud took time to figure out how to drive the damn thing. It had been a while since he'd driven, but after a few moments of orientating himself with the gears, it wasn't so difficult. Although the tank was a lot bulkier than his mother's mountain-swerving little Nibel-mobile, he treated it tenderly, not wanting to make even the tiniest scratch on the paint.

The cars in the city of Midgar all seemed to steer clear of the black tank, even though Cloud was piloting it safely and respectfully. The large, wary radius around him in traffic, and the emptiness of the large interior cabin made him ache to have Sephiroth in the driver's seat, playing in traffic and racing through his gears while muttering curses under his breath.

At a red light, Cloud became curious and peeped into Sephiroth's glove compartment. It was empty. Then, he looked in the arm rest. Empty as well.

He gave up hope on finding anything fun when he decided to feel beneath the driver's seat. His hand bumped into something, and he pulled it up.

It was a McDonalds bag full of hastily crumpled trash. Cloud smiled and looked at the receipt stapled to the front of it. At some point, Sephiroth had devoured seven double cheeseburgers.

Cloud then noticed the date. It was the day of his departure for the Northern Crater.

"Fatass…" He smiled warmly, and replaced the evidence under the driver's seat.

He let himself into Sephiroth's loft, dropped his stuff in Sephiroth's room, and worked quickly. He opened the windows, turned on the air, and began to clean. As expected, the bed was covered in a small layer of dust, so Cloud threw the sheets into Sephiroth's washing machine.

Sephiroth's laundry room was a frightening place for Cloud, as the walls were papered with brutal and bloody horror movie posters. It wasn't bad at all when Sephiroth was around, but Cloud threw the stuff into the machine as quickly as he could to get the hell out of there.

Then, he ran down to the corner store. He picked up things Sephiroth liked; orange juice, sodas, junk food items, ice cream, and some odds and ends that looked great to a someone who hadn't eaten anything processed in weeks. He also picked up some beer for himself, hidden casually among the other items.

He ran back up to the loft and threw the sheets in the dryer, then stocked the fridge, which had been emptied out prior to Sephiroth's departure. He dusted off the TV, and beat the couch cushions and pillows. He swept the floor, and sprayed his cologne around.

The loft was sparkling by the time he was done, and with the bed freshly made and ready to be torn apart, he left and hightailed back to the HQ building. He was tempted to go straight up to Sephiroth's office in case he might be there, but he checked in with the front desk girl, instead.

"Could you tell Mr. Rufus Shin-Ra that Cloud Strife is here to see him?" He asked sweetly.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Yes," Cloud lied. She typed something, murmured into a phone, and then told Cloud to take a seat. He perched on one of the posh white couches and bit his nails, hoping Rufus was actually there. He'd look like a total asshole if he claimed to have an appointment and the guy wasn't even around.

Rufus apparently found it in his heart to send a Turk down to greet him. "Mr. Shin-Ra would like to know what this is regarding."

Cloud fidgeted. "I'd like to speak with him for a minute, uh, concerning the press conference tonight. I was wondering if he was going, and if he could take me with him? I wanna go so I can surprise my boyfriend."

The Turk looked completely confused by what was just said, but motioned for Cloud to follow along, anyways. His eyes tracked the halls for any sign of Sephiroth; every single hallway and doorway were peeked quickly into.

They passed by Sephiroth's office, and Cloud's heart stopped when he saw that the door way was actually standing open! But the lights were off and nobody was inside. Cloud felt a strong urge to go smell around for scent imprints of his beloved, but the Turk probably wouldn't understand why a cadet would be sniffing the General's seat cushion like pervert.

No other clues of Sephiroth's presence were found as he was led up to Rufus' office, which was now completely different than the first time he'd visited. Apparently Rufus had redecorated from 17th Century decadence to an ultra modern, sleek white decor. The man had so much time on his hands.

This was apparent as Rufus was in gym clothes, and two fully suited Turks with towels around their shoulders were watching on as he went through a series of pilates poses.

"What do you need?" Rufus asked, holding his position.

Cloud smiled. "I heard there was a press conference thing tonight. Are you going?"

"Of course I am," Rufus said dismissively, his voice slightly out of breath.

"Will you take me with you?"

"Why don't you go with Sephiroth?" he asked, tightening up his form when one of the Turks tapped a flagging elbow.

"He didn't invite me."

"Oh, my! Did you two break up?" Rufus winced as a Turk slapped at him again when his form began to slump as he became interested in gossip.

"No. But we did get into a little fight," Cloud admitted. "I want to surprise him. And I've always wanted to see him speak. And… I haven't seen him in months. Please take me with you Rufus?"

"Are you sure just showing up would be a wise thing to do?"

"I don't care. I can't just wait around all day."

Rufus dropped his yoga pose suddenly, much to the Turk's displeasure. "I'll take you on one condition. You must grant me one, true moment of pure honesty. Can you manage that?"

Cloud blinked with wide eyes. "…Sure."

"In the event of Genesis's absence and my personal battle with dropping a few… bad habits… I have foolishly turned to food for comfort. Cloud… have I put on any visible weight since you've last seen me?"

Cloud absolutely hated questions like this. His mother was constantly worried about her figure, which was frankly as streamlined as his own. But he couldn't tell her that she had the body of a teenage boy, so he had to come up with a lot of imaginary adjectives such as "femmesexy" and "rubustinny".

He assessed Rufus while he panicked inside his mind. Rufus didn't exactly look different. But he couldn't be sure. "Um. Maybe take off your shirt?"

The Turks all balked, but Rufus whipped the shirt off over his head. "Tell me the truth, Cloud. I know I've gained ten pounds. But do I look like I've gained ten pounds?"

Cloud tilted his head. "You… don't look that much different. And you're definitely not fat. You're… masculithin."

Rufus assumed Cloud had just spoken in a different language. "Is this a bad thing?"

"Not at all!" Cloud promised. "Personally, I think it's hot. You were a bit too skinny before."

"Yeah, right," Rufus challenged, crossing his arms over his chest in an act of pure self consciousness.

"No, I think you look a lot healthier, now. You don't look like a cracked out me –" He cut himself off when he realized that Rufus actually had been a cracked out mess. "…I mean, you have abs instead of just...ribs. You look good!"

Rufus slowly uncrossed his arms. "I suppose it isn't explicitly necessary for one to be a size two in women's jeans, is it?"

Cloud laughed a little. "I'm a four, and it's skin tight."

Rufus put his hands on his hips. "Well, if you're a four, I can live with being a four," And with that, he shooed the Turks away and sat behind his desk. He pulled out a black schedule book. "The press event is at five today. I'm leaving in an hour, and that time I must spend getting ready. So stay here and try not to make a mess."

Cloud nodded happily. "Thank you!"

Rufus stood up, then paused. "Did Genesis look…good?"

"He looked tired. But yeah, he looked good."

"Do I look too big to be with him? Are we a ridiculous couple now?"

Cloud made an impatient noise. "Bitch, you're still skinny, you just don't look like you're about to snap apart like a rickety little Olsen twin. Now go get ready!"

Rufus huffed and left, and Cloud immediately began to snoop around his office. He steered clear of his desk, but opened drawers in the coffee table, and looked in couch cushions. The only notable thing he found was a ten gil bill, which he pocketed. Other than that, the place was pristine.

Then, he opened a tiny door in the wall and found the minibar. With one eye on the door, he stuck a little bottle of Ginger Rum into his pocket, knowing it'd come in handy later. He eventually picked up a magazine geared towards people who were far wealthier than himself and settled down.

Rufus appeared exactly sixty minutes later, and had made a daring choice for the fat fearful, donning his usual attire of all white, although a bit less dressy than it usually was and a bit more alluring and sexy. It was very Audrey Hepburn of him.

Cloud actually did think he looked rather handsome with the extra mass. He'd crossed a line from "fun faggot" to "flaming heartthrob". Cloud approved, maybe a little too much as he leaned on Rufus' desk and smiled flirtatiously without even meaning to.

Rufus ignored him and took some items from his desk; keys, his planner, and an energy drink. He turned and regarded Cloud wearily, as though he suddenly regretted agreeing to chaperone a tag along.

Cloud spoke up quickly before he could decide to change his mind. "Would you mind if I followed you in Sephiroth's tank? I have his keys and I know he'll probably want to drive home."

Rufus nodded. "Good idea. I needed time alone in my limo to take the edge off, anyways."

Cloud was both amused and puzzled, and unsure as to whether the President's son had just admitted to being an alcoholic or a chronic masturbator.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

With Rufus, getting into anywhere was just a matter of walking up to a door. He didn't have to do or say anything, it just opened, every single time.

The press event was crowded, full of prim, beautiful reporters and their fat, balding cameramen. There weren't as many SOLDIERs as Cloud was expecting, but rather the commanders and higher ups, looking somber, serious and slightly bored. Cloud wondered if maybe they all had people they were anxious to get home to after so long away.

From the outside, the building looked like some sort of massive, sprawling ancient temple. This was bullshit, because everything above the plate was practically brand new. So they built an ancient-looking domed building, then beat the hell out of it to make it look older than it was.

Cloud focused on the architecture as a way to not focus on the crowd he was squeezing through. They were either distinguished military elite, or had more money than he would ever see in his life. Of course, nobody was richer than Rufus, and it showed as he routinely turned his nose up at conversation with nameless, bedazzled high class persons.

Not that Cloud blamed him, they all seemed to want to ask about Rufus' money. Gil must have become a dull subject after a while. Cloud certainly wasn't interested in money, but more of what money could magically turn into at a cash register…which was probably the reason why he didn't have any. He had most of what his father had given to him left, but a little bit of money from a distant relative didn't make him feel wealthy in the slightest.

He finally decided it'd be a good idea to keep it for a car. Not because he needed one, especially in a city like Midgar, but he was more attracted to the things that could occur inside the vehicle. Like driving with his knees while he fished out a pack of cigarettes, like his mother. Or ordering fast food. Or going on a spontaneous daytrip to the beach. Or mooning someone on the freeway. Or getting a blowjob while stuck in traffic. Or going bumper sticker shopping!

Cloud realized he was getting thrilled about the prospect of bumper stickers, and felt more out of place than ever. He wanted to see what all the snobs were wearing, but Rufus was still on the move, passing through the crowd and not caring about anything or anyone.

Then, more and more of the crowd began to move in the general direction Rufus was headed. Everyone was beginning to siphon into a large banquet hall with balcony seating and a small, yet official looking stage. Cloud thrilled at the idea of watching Sephiroth speak in person, and wondered if they were going to score good seats higher up.

But Rufus didn't stop, even when the elegant, white table clothed tables ended and the stage began. Cloud was shocked that nobody tried to stop them. In fact, Rufus walked right onto the stage and breezed back into the corridor behind it like he owned the place.

Well, he did.

People bustled to and fro, clipboards waving and lighting crew making their final preparations. Cloud almost tripped over some thick wires on the floor, but Rufus caught his arm. Cloud thanked him with a slightly embarrassed smile, but Rufus said nothing and only continued to walk, his gait becoming more quick and impatient.

People started talking about Sephiroth; whispering, murmuring, and even shouting sentences with his name hissed in between the rest of the words until it sounded like some sort of snaky chant. Cloud looked in all directions, but didn't see his beloved anywhere at all.

"Rufus, where are we going?" Cloud shouted above the rest of the people's volume.

"Here," Rufus said simply, and stopped in front of a door with the word "WAITING" taped onto it. He turned to Cloud and bared his teeth. "Do I have anything in them?"

Cloud looked, shook his head, then bared his own.

"You're good," Rufus decided after a moment, then smoothed down the side of Cloud's hair. When it popped right back up, he scratched it into submission with his nails like his mother always used to. Cloud finally pushed his hand away, then fixed a single stray hair of Rufus' that had managed to get away from the rest of his perfect, moussed comb-back.

When they were done primping each other like monkeys, Rufus opened the door.

Cloud took a breath and let his eyes search the room. There was Genesis, pouring himself what appeared to be a Screwdriver with a lot of Screw, and there was Angeal, seated on the sofa with a tiny plate full of crackers and cheese.

There was nobody else.

"Mmmm!" Rufus part-growled, part-squealed in this throat, and launched himself across the room and into Genesis' arms, who spilled his Screwdriver everywhere. He obviously didn't care about the drink anymore, and threw the cup to the side to wrap both arms around Rufus.

Genesis cooed something softly, and Cloud suddenly felt like he was being invasive simply by breathing their air. He turned to the only other person in the room. Angeal had his entire mouth full of crackers and seemed very uncaring towards the romantic reunion. Cloud peeked back enviously at the happy couple, rocking each other in their arms and planting kisses across each other's faces.

He decided to check out the goodies; there was a long table with liquor and manly, grown up snacks, but he couldn't have been any less hungry. There were two sofas facing a large, wall mounted screen. It showed the stage outside while hinting very little to the elegant, wealthy atmosphere, only looked very business-like, official, and streamlined.

Cloud shuffled limply across the room and plopped down on the couch across from Angeal. "Don't tell me. I just missed Seph, didn't I?"

Angeal shook his head and spoke through cheese and caviar. "It's better if he's alone before he talks like this. He gets so nervous."

"Does he?" Cloud smiled and crossed his legs, his foot wagging impatiently.

Angeal took a long drink of what smelled like pure rubbing alcohol. "In his own way. He gets pissy and mean. He goes on first, and we tell him not to come around us until he's finished."

Cloud giggled and crossed his arms over his sore stomach. He felt like he could just about turn inside out from nerves. Suddenly, a small, fat bald man took the stage and Cloud could both see the flashes from cameras on the broadcast, but he could also hear them from outside.

The little man gave detailed rundown of everything that had occurred over the past three months, focusing on what it cost Shin-Ra to move the troops and weapons, and what they stood to gain from owning the Northern Crater.

Cloud's brows lowered. It couldn't be. The well-to-do people at this event… they weren't Shin-Ra stockholders, were they?

Of course they were.

Cloud frowned and looked at Angeal, who was completely unfazed by this grotesque information. Genesis and Rufus had finally drifted to the couch, where they couldn't keep their hands off of each other. Genesis had both arms wrapped around Rufus' shoulders, who was blushing like a virginal bride.

Cloud didn't blame him. He only partially continued to listen to more of the financial edge of war that he had been previously unaware of, and straightened in his seat when the man began to introduce General Sephiroth for his address.

When Sephiroth finally came stalking out, Cloud could see what Angeal was talking about – his beloved did not look happy. Sephiroth didn't just take the stage, he practically stormed the thing, burning it up with an rigid, serious demeanor that made Cloud almost a little afraid. The little bald man's presence was blotted out entirely, as one's eye couldn't even move its sight from Sephiroth for a moment.

Sephiroth spoke, and like the flashing cameras, Cloud could both hear it from the screen and amplified by the speakers nearby. His voice was trained and articulate, clinical and melodically monotonous. In that moment, Cloud could hardly recall what that voice sounded like pressed against his ear and whining softly to extract a smile, or even purring while he slept.

This man didn't possibly cuddle or tickle or enjoy kissing the backs of his lover's knees. He was the epitome of strength, of power and of manliness. He was flawless, serious, and beautiful. General Sephiroth would fuck a bitch up.

Cloud had never felt more moved by, or more proud of his beloved. He swallowed down a rock in his throat, wanting to cry just by the presence of him on a television screen, knowing he was only a few feet away. Cloud wanted to invade that stage, take him in his arms and declare his love on a live feed before a studio audience.

Once he became used to watching Sephiroth, Cloud began to actually listen to and understand what he was actually talking about. He wasn't talking about money; that had been the fat baldy's job. He was talking about the tides of the military movements, how many peoplehad been sent, and how many had come home. He talked about the casualties, but not in a heavy handed, emotional way. He was presenting information, but not just rattling off numbers and figures… it was entertaining because he had presence, because he was raw and lovely while he spoke, and because he was just General Sephiroth.

After several minutes, Sephiroth was very abruptly finished with his speech. He stared at the camera. Very briefly, he licked the side of his mouth, and after sweeping the room with his eyes, he said in a rather bored way, "I'm open for questions."

Cloud was absolutely floored by the man's charisma. And soon, he was going to kiss that mouth and taste that tongue. He couldn't help himself, he screamed from sheer, lovegasming bliss.

Rufus and Genesis both chuckled, their happy little couple vibe flowing steady. Angeal however, was lost. "What? What'd I miss? I was looking at the cookie tray, what'd I miss?"

Sephiroth answered their questions. He moved through them quickly, not skipping a beat. If the reporter wasn't ready, or stumbled over his or her words, he skipped them by merely making eye contact with the next one. It was totally cold, elitist and catty, and absolutely sensational to watch.

Then someone asked, "General Sephiroth, it's been rumored that the care and guarding of the Crater might be handed over to the Turks. If so, what kind of permanent presence can we expect to see from them?"

Sephiroth didn't blink. "Save that question for Commander of the Turks. He can offer you a more complete answer."

Cloud's skin bristled slightly. That was Vincent! Was Vincent here?! It was impossible to find photographs of Turks on the internet, and Cloud knew that because he had tried desperately to find out what the Turk commander – Sephiroth's possible father, looked like. Cloud pictured him looking like Sephiroth, maybe a little more spicy and aged, but with the same silver hair and piercing green eyes. He even went to the Turk building on campus to see if there were any clues. The building's walls were dark blue and the décor was sleek and white. No pictures anywhere, just disassembled machine guns in glass curio cases mounted on the walls, and occasionally a bright red accent, like a chair pillow or light switch cover.

If Vincent was going to speak, a mosaic would probably cover his face for broadcast, but Cloud couldn't imagine him walking around the event with a bag over his head. Surely the Shin-Ra insiders knew what he looked like...

After that question, Sephiroth listened to the press fight over who would ask the next one, and then suddenly departed. Just like that, he just pushed off of the podium where he had been leaning impatiently, turned and left the stage. And if the man could make an entrance, he sure as hell could make an exit. Cloud knew he didn't try to make his hair flip like that. It was almost as though the long, silky tresses were flirtatiously waving goodbye.

When the edges of Sephiroth's coat finally slipped behind the stage, the bald man retook his place, but couldn't begin to fill the gaping hole that Sephiroth's presence had created.

Cloud knew all about that!

He leapt off of the couch and stood by the door like a puppy, waiting for it to burst open and a powerful, angry man to come inside. He pressed his ear to it and listened to the bustling as people passed by, and then heard boots stomping. No, strutting.

Cloud braced himself against the door panel as the sound of the boots waxed, and then to his bewilderment, waned. Sephiroth wasn't returning to the room with Angeal and Genesis and the free booze? Where the hell was he going?

Cloud gripped the frame with his fingers, trying to decide what to do when his pocket began to sing loudly. The ring tone belonged to Sephiroth, and Cloud answered it slowly. "…Hello..?"

Sephiroth sighed wearily. "All finished, where are you?"

Surely there was a myriad of smooth, romantic ways Cloud could have let his lover know that he was nearby. Looking back, he would later kick himself for not having found a way to create some sort of treasure hunt, or even fall into Sephiroth's line of sight, then maybe play dumb and let Sephiroth chase him around the building. There were so many ways a smaller predator could capture a larger one, and they were all lovely ideas that would occur to Cloud much, much later.

"I'm here!" Cloud yelped as he tore the door open, not a tactful thought in his mind. He spilled from the doorway and slapped right into the adjacent wall of the thin hallway.

Sephiroth paused and looked over his shoulder in complete surprise, his mouth parting and hanging open slightly. Cloud pushed himself off of the wall and approached.

The bustling of the backstage workers paused, and looked to the source of the boisterous shout and subsequent commotion. One burly guard even began to approach Cloud to escort him out, thinking that perhaps a groupie had found his way backstage.

Cloud didn't want to make more of a scene, but in his haste to reach Sephiroth, he just didn't care. He ran as fast as he could.

The General barely had time to open his arms before they collided with each other. He enfolded Cloud, too shocked to do much else but catch him. Cloud whipped his arms around Sephiroth's waist and fastened his fingers like a seatbelt, already becoming a mess of trembles and tears.

Sephiroth's shoulder fell against a door and he searched for the handle with one hand, while the other pulled Cloud's head into his chest, cradling and protecting him from the view of strangers during this vulnerable moment. The door was thankfully unlocked, and he swept Cloud inside.

The room was dark, but Sephiroth could see the light switch. He flipped it, and they appeared to be in a storage space for symphony equipment. Sephiroth slammed the door shut and leaned against it heavily, his hands gripping onto Cloud's clothes.

"You..!" Cloud sobbed nonsensically as he yanked Sephiroth's neck down into a hug, while wrapping one leg around his hips and pulling himself up as though he were climbing a tree.

Sephiroth hadn't nearly forgotten how perfectly Cloud's compact little body fit against his. How his hair felt against his face, insistent upon tickling him and sneaking up his nose. How sturdy his narrow frame was. How fantastic he smelled. How soft. How warm. How beautiful.

Sephiroth felt his knees go so weak, one of them actually shaking a little. When Cloud's damp, warm cheek pressed into his, he couldn't stop his emotions from escaping him.

If Cloud's cheeks hadn't been so wet already, he might have noticed a tiny pinpoint of salty wetness that didn't belong to him. It mixed in with his own tears and dripped down a wet path to his lips.

He didn't notice. He was too absorbed in Sephiroth's burning body heat radiating from underneath his clothes. He was solid, hard, big. Maybe even bigger than his memories served, as in his recollections he always made them more the same size. Either way, Sephiroth was the perfect man, his man. Cloud moaned a little in gratitude to the Universe.

In the span of a lifetime, three months were merely a couple of drops in the bucket. But coming back to the one they both loved, those months felt both eternal during the waiting part, but also not so very long at all in the face of the reunion part. After three months of pain, they were finally comfortable again with their arms around each other, their bodies pressed together just right.

Three months of just missing something. It was more than the other's presence, or the bodily pleasures they both possessed. It was as though something in their souls hungered for each other. Cloud squeezed himself closer, but it wasn't close enough. It seemed like the burden of having a body kept him from quenching his thirst for Sephiroth, his own skin was getting in the way.

Every single snippy, annoyed, exhausted remark Sephiroth had given Cloud over the phone during those months were erased. Every time Cloud had to fight to swallow down complaint after complaint were forgotten about. And Cloud's laughably lame brush with infidelity meant less than nothing.

"Did I surprise you?" Cloud whispered when he could manage it.

"You… actually surprised the fuck outta me," Sephiroth admitted and discreetly wiped the wetness on his face off on Cloud's collar.

Cloud opened his eyes and found Sephiroth's ear tucked away behind his silver fringe. He ran his lips up the curve of it, and purred petulantly. "You were taking too long to come to me, dear. I didn't feel like waiting for you anymore."

Sephiroth chuckled, not because it was funny, but just out of sheer happiness. "Ah, fuck. I'm glad you're an impatient little shit."

Cloud leaned back to look at Sephiroth and was indulged with a wide, happy, sultry smile. He was stricken by the sight of those lips so close, real and available. But Cloud didn't lunge forward to steal away the first kiss. There would be plenty of kisses to snatch and take in the time to come, and he would most likely initiate three fourths of them, simply because he was greedy.

But this kiss was one of those ones. One to remember. Instead of snatching it, he wanted it to be given to him. He waited, blinking his eyes up at Sephiroth who took the action to close the last tiny bit of distance between them.

Their lips met somewhat clumsily at first out of eagerness, then fitted together smoothly. Sephiroth took Cloud's upper lip, and the little cherubic bud fit perfectly between his lips as Cloud sucked in his plump lower one. They stayed still, each savoring the feeling of the other man's softness and breathing in each other's scent.

Sephiroth applied a bit more pressure and released, giving Cloud a tickling pop that made him giggle through his nose. He brought his lips back immediately, enflamed by the little tinkling octave that he had missed so damn much.

He cradled Cloud's face with a gloved hand while the other supported his weight, and he kissed Cloud over and over, quick little kitten presses across his lips. Some were longer than others, but all were sensual and soft, and made up for the sheer number of kisses they'd missed out on during their time apart.

Around the six hundredth consecutive smooch, Sephiroth opened his mouth and tongued Cloud's lips until they opened up. Cloud sighed when one of the most intimate parts of Sephiroth's body flicked into his mouth, tasting him and connecting them.

Cloud was lost in a daze, unsure even if his tongue was moving, or if Sephiroth was moving it for him. He knew nothing of time or space, he wasn't even sure if they were still in the backstage hallway or not. He was flooded with indescribable desire, so deep and so thick that he almost hated Sephiroth for being away for so long. New tears formed and fell down his cheeks, salting the taste of their kiss.

Sephiroth sagged against the wall. His feet slipped slowly out until Cloud stood between his spread legs. They locked beneath him and at the more comfortable angle, their hands were better able to slide and feel across the other's body.

Sephiroth's hands moved down and rubbed warm circles into Cloud's tailbone before gently tugging on and untucking Cloud's uniform shirt. Once it was loose, his leather covered fingers slipped up his back, the hot contact enough to make him arch against Sephiroth in both slight ticklishness and desperation for more. The hands made themselves flat and slipped down the back of Cloud's pants and cupped tightly, making Cloud moan loudly into Sephiroth's mouth.

Fuck the academy, fuck SOLDIER, fuck everything. He was completely done with trying to be tough and macho, he wanted to beg, to completely submit and live his life for the sole purpose of giving this man pleasure. He wanted nothing more than to live like a barnacle attached to Sephiroth, and just kiss him, kiss him, kiss him. All day. Every day.

That would be paradise, and that was what Cloud hoped being a part of the Lifestream was like. Just Sephiroth and himself near each other and happy. They'd never run out of things to talk about, or interesting people to spy on as spirits. The idea was so wonderful to Cloud that he felt silly for being fearful of death only two days prior. What was to fear when it held such wonderful possibilities?

But living had its perks too, and Cloud experienced a number of them all at once. His cock rubbed perfectly between the soft zipper of his fatigues and Sephiroth's heated body. His skin reacted with goosebumps and his taste buds tingled happily with the hot flavor of Sephiroth's mouth. He felt his lover's breath and his long eyelashes kiss against his cheeks delicately. Yes, having a living body was definitely a good thing.

Cloud's hand moved, daring to explore the tight leather landscape of Sephiroth's long frame. He meant to be a lot smoother, but his hand was quick and jerky as it slid down Sephiroth's thigh, seeking any evidence of Sephiroth's arousal that he could find.

Sephiroth's hand snatched his up. "Bad."

"I'm bad? Your fingers are up my ass," Cloud pouted. It was true enough, there was a welcome, firm press of leather against the more delicate areas of his bum. Sephiroth realized this and his hand quickly came up out of Cloud's pants. "Aw, I didn't mean for you to stop."

Sephiroth snorted in disbelief. "What? You wanna do it right here?"

"…Is that an option?"

"No," Sephiroth smiled.

"Well… I do have a surprise for you," Cloud whispered around the edges of a new kiss.

Sephiroth took a longer time to respond than he usually would have at the mention of a surprise, only because he couldn't tear himself away from the sweet, soft lips so close to his. When he finally managed to break away, he took the bait. "…What?"

Cloud slipped a hand into his front pocket and shook the keys that had been loaned to him. "Your wheels."

Sephiroth grunted wordlessly and kissed Cloud again, this time less in greeting and more in the way of a demanding promise.

Cloud pulled away with a small gasp. "We're gonna have to stop right now, or get naked right now."

Sephiroth snickered. "Did I turn you into a tripod?"

Cloud stared at Sephiroth's face, the perfect, creamy smooth vision of feline beauty. "…Since I was a kid."

"You still are a kid," Sephiroth reminded him.

"So are you."

"…Guess you're right," Sephiroth admitted. He squeezed Cloud into a short, fierce hug before releasing him, but didn't let him get far. He hooked an arm around his narrow shoulders and guided him out of the room.

Once in the hallway, they were run over by Genesis.

"Oh, great!" He frowned. "You missed my entire lecture while having a quickie!"

Sephiroth didn't bother correcting him. "Sorry. I found somethin' better in the hallway," And with that, he spun Cloud around and began to guide him to make a hasty exit.

Genesis bawled, "Where do you two think you're going?"

Sephiroth didn't stop walking. "We're cuttin' out."

Genesis followed them, trotting along like a bewildered puppy. "But you can't go! We have another Q and A round to do after everyone is done speaking! And then we all have to suffer through dinner! You can't leave now!"

Sephiroth stopped walking and looked up at the ceiling in exasperation, seeming to try to separate himself from duty but just not able to completely disconnect from it.

Cloud wanted to back Sephiroth up in his decision to get the hell out of there, but then remembered that he hadn't hit the free drinks in the waiting room, yet. Also, he had a once in a lifetime opportunity to see and possibly meet Sephiroth's dad. Whether there was genetic evidence of it or not, it was still his dad. "…Maybe we should stay for a little while longer, Seph."

"What the hell?" Sephiroth blurted down at Cloud, obviously not expecting that from the blonde.

Cloud bit back a smile. "I just mean… I don't want to make you miss something important… I can wait just a little longer…"

Sephiroth gave a look that very plainly stated that he did not want to wait a little longer. But after he took a breath, his logic kicked in and he knew it wasn't the most responsible idea to skip out on the last, but most important of his duties – public relations. Genesis was a charmer, and Angeal was known for his extremely moving speaking abilities, but he knew if he didn't show up for the final round, his own absence would overshadow anything the other Generals would have to say.

Sephiroth grumbled slowly, "We'll stay. But we're skippin' dinner and I don't care what you think about it."

Genesis was pleased, and Sephiroth trudged back to the waiting room to find Rufus heavily involved with a martini, and Angeal taking his turn speaking on the big screen.

Rufus and Genesis ate each other alive with their eyes across the room while Sephiroth found his way to the couch and Cloud bounced to the liquor table. He assessed the goods before he poured Sephiroth a large shot of whiskey, and then mixed himself a sloppy translation of a Slutty Virgin.

He practically skipped to the General and gave him his drink with a kiss to the top of his head. He wanted to plop right down into his lap, but the General was settling into serious mode, watching Angeal speak with focus. Cloud instead opted to sit beside him, pressing the length of his thigh alongside his and sipping his drink.

Genesis and Rufus were far less demure, and the sound of their baby talk and kissing was enough to make Cloud want another drink, and quick. Even though the noise of another couple was less than welcome at the moment, he couldn't help but be terribly happy for them, and leaned into Sephiroth's arm with a smile. When he was awarded a kiss to the side of his face, he felt that he could have died rather happily.

Angeal left the stage and the balding man then introduced a man who dealt with plans for a new base in the Crater, then another person who spoke about the different types of troops who won the battle, even briefly mentioning the drum squad, to which Cloud couldn't help but hop a little in excitement to be included.

He felt an arm wrap around him and pull him down, not to snuff his enthusiasm but merely capture and feed off of it. Sephiroth pulled him close with a smile, planting a quick kiss on Cloud's lips.

That quick kiss was beginning to turn into a longer one, when the bald man began to speak about Turks. Cloud jerked his face away and fell silent, watching raptly while his fingers spun around the rim of his glass.

A man walked onto the stage, and Cloud thought that perhaps there had been a mistake. Vincent Valentine could not have been a lanky, youthful man with a shaggy dark bob. Vincent Valentine was supposed to be pushing 50, he was supposed to be old enough to have fathered the great General Sephiroth.

There was no way this could have been the same Vincent who took care of Sephiroth as a baby, and had possibly banged Sephiroth's mother and created a man who possessed the most ethereal beauty of all time. Would that man have worn fingerless gloves beneath his Turk suit? Would he have leaned against the podium on one elbow without a care in the world? Would he have scratched the back of his head as he thought?

Cloud wasn't convinced, and he felt a bit sorry for Sephiroth. He agreed that Vincent could not have been his father, he was too…

Cloud then listened to Vincent speak. He wasn't sure if it was the accent or what, but he and Sephiroth's voices were extremely similar. Sephiroth was always monotone, and Vincent was only a tad more animated, but the tone and quality were very much... the same.

Then, Cloud looked at Vincent's face. It was hard to focus on his features underneath his wild dark hair and startling, bright red eyes, and Cloud supposed that may have been the point. He was a handsome man, and even though Cloud was dissecting everything about him, he wasn't sure he'd be able to pick him out of a lineup if asked to.

Cloud peeked up at Sephiroth, and focused on Sephiroth's face. Not his beauty, but his face. His lips parted a bit in surprise when he realized that the General carried that same quality. His silver hair and leather outfit were a fierce distraction from his actual features. When one looked at his face, they registered an insane amount of beauty, but might not actually recall what he looked like.

Cloud slowly began to change his mind. Vincent…very well could have been his father.

He peeked again at Sephiroth and noticed the faraway look he held. He touched Sephiroth's hand and wriggled his fingers through longer ones. They tightened around his in return.

The Turk didn't have much to say before he began to answer questions. And then, he was gone. Cloud noted that Sephiroth's dad, much like his possible son, had long legs and a killer ass.

There were more speakers, but eventually it was time for the three Generals to leave for their last bit of press, and Sephiroth and Cloud kissed as though they were going to be apart for another three months. Angeal had to pry Sephiroth's gloved hands out of Cloud's hair before he'd finally let go and followed them out the door.

Cloud got over his separation anxiety quickly, and mixed another drink before sitting down to watch, amazed at the teamwork and chemistry the three Generals shared onscreen.

Genesis was the Brat, Angeal was the Daddy, and Sephiroth was the Fonz. It worked incredibly well, and Genesis showed his charming, humorous side, a few times causing the entire room to laugh, Rufus and Cloud included. When Sephiroth tried for a joke, only the cool kids laughed, while everyone else thought it was too off-color to be seen indulging in a chuckle or two. When Angeal went for humor, he stole more hearts of the ages 35-60 demographic than Frasier.

A press junket would hardly be so much fun to watch if he didn't know the three men personally, but it was his lover, and his lover's best friends. They represented all that SOLDIER was, and all that every SOLDIER wanted to be. It was like Neapolitan ice cream, the three best flavors all mixed together just right.

Cloud wanted to be like them, and to be one of them.

The Generals arrived back to the waiting room with some other high ranking officers in tow, talking shop and settling down into the more social atmosphere than the banquet probably entailed.

Sephiroth's eyes kept drifting to Cloud, who was having a conversation with Rufus concerning the surprising caloric contents of alcohol.

They both realized at the exact same time that where they were was not where they wanted to be. At all.

"I hope you don't mind if I excuse myself," Sephiroth said smoothly, breaking away and approaching Cloud. "You said you weren't feeling well?"

Cloud turned his eyebrows up. "Just feeling a little hot and… feverish."

"It's coming back out of that god forsaken snow!" an older commander declared loudly underneath his bushy graying beard. "All of my men have got the goddamn sniffles. Get the boy under something warm and give him plenty of liquids!"

"I'll do that," Sephiroth agreed, not a drop of irony in his voice, although both he and Cloud's inner perverts were performing cartwheels. One glance of eye contact saw to that.

Sephiroth grabbed his pack, which was stored in a locked room down the hall, and they were set free. Once they were clear of most personnel, they began to grope and feel each other as they walked, a wandering hand over the ass, a lingering brush of arms. Soon, the two of them were practically running and when they got outside, they bolted.

Cloud grabbed Sephiroth's hand and led him towards the tank and they crashed into it, both panting and laughing. Cloud dug the keys out of his pocket and Sephiroth plucked them away. He hefted Cloud up with one arm, kissing him while trying to get the door unlocked.

Sephiroth's hand clumsily scratched his keys across the paintjob of the backseat door in his haste to get into the vehicle. Cloud gasped loudly – the man had completely wrecked his paintjob.

Sephiroth couldn't have cared less as he tore the door open, almost literally throwing Cloud inside up onto the seat. He threw his pack into the front seat without a care, then yanked the door closed as he crawled in after him.

Cloud was panting from adrenaline, and some sort of fear of his unhinged lover. If he'd scratched up one of his "babies", he might be into the idea of scratching up the other one. That wasn't only a nerve wracking notion; it made Cloud more desperate for contact than ever.

His senses heightened to become aware of everything – the feel of his clothes sticking to his body in the humid night air inside the tank, the glow of Sephiroth's eyes in the dark, the rush of his blood through his veins, the wetness of his mouth as nerves caused him to hyper salivate, the sound of his own respiration as he panted in anticipation as Sephiroth overtook him and pressed him down onto the backseat.

He opened his mouth willingly against the torrent of Sephiroth's lips and tongue. His long body draped over Cloud, and his lips came crashing down in angry waves until neither could breathe. The time and the distance, and now the rush and the raw, bodily desire were all combining to make Cloud brainless as it usually did, and it seemed he had taken Sephiroth with him on that mindless trip.

"Here?" Cloud whispered, his breath ragged as he turned his head to capture some air.

"Is that okay?" Sephiroth asked gently while his body demanded possessively, his hands already pulling at Cloud's belt.

"Yeah!" Cloud moaned, but his verbal permission was just a formality. Gloved hands snuck into his fatigues and pulled him out, and the contact to his most desperate organ ripped a shocked little roar from him.

Clothes quickly became baneful, loathsome things, and Cloud groaned with disgust at every button of his shirt that kept Sephiroth's hands from his skin, and sneered at his tight fitting pants as Sephiroth peeled them down off of his legs. Sephiroth ripped his gloves off to feel that skin with his bare hands; the fatigues weren't even completely off before they were sliding up the lean limbs and placing wet kisses across Cloud's knees. Cloud toed the pants off and spread his legs, pulling the General down by the straps of his uniform to settle between them.

At the reality of his nude, trembling, sexually aroused lover, Sephiroth seized every part of Cloud's body he could get to. He felt and enjoyed the softness and the form, the fit of his slim legs under his hands, the narrow waist that arched up to get closer to him. There was no place that didn't open up and allure him to touch, squeeze or kiss.

Sephiroth's clothes were more difficult to remove, and had so many little catches and button and straps that Cloud gave a little growl in his throat. Especially at the absurd SOLDIER belt catch; he usually removed the item with reverence, but in that moment it was just a thick piece of leather that was standing stubbornly between him and Sephiroth. When it was off, it was thrown into the front seat disdainfully.

Sephiroth took Cloud's reckless hands from his zipper and kissed them, moving them away so he could perform the delicate task of unzipping his pants himself. If it was caught in his zipper, not even his SOLDIER healing abilities would have been enough to save the moment. They both chuckled a bit at this reality while Sephiroth quickly worked himself free.

Cloud barely saw it before his hands sought after it. Sephiroth gave a much louder groan than Cloud was expecting, and he felt himself twitch hard at the beautiful noise. He gave it several tugging caresses, each time watching Sephiroth's eyes as they slitted and glowed brightly in the dark. Cloud forced his hand to release his lover's cock in order to greet the rest of his set up, and rolled Sephiroth's tightened balls in his hand gently. While Cloud played, Sephiroth worked his pants down off of his hips and let them bunch at the tops of his boots.

"Just a little bit now," Sephiroth promised, kissing Cloud's forehead as his naked hips touched Cloud's. "Little bit now, the rest later. I know this is rushed and prolly not what you've been hopin' fo– "

"Give me a break!" Cloud barked on a lilting bit of laughter before drowning Sephiroth's bullshit guilt in kisses. It had been too long and while he understood that sensual, stare-in-my-eyes lovemaking would take place later, he needed a band aid for his desire right then. He didn't care if it was sweet or rough as long as he got it.

"Are you tryin' to tell me to shut up and fuck you?" Sephiroth smiled.

"Shut up and fuck me…" Cloud purred in agreement, the words slinking out of his mouth more seriously than he meant them to.

Sephiroth didn't laugh at him, but met his request whole heartedly. He bucked his cock into Cloud's, the hard line pressing into his as the slick tip moved up between his legs and pressed with the perfect amount of force. They moaned for each other, and the two low tones sounded of awe and of relief. The tank was filled with the noise of their bodies moving against each other. Their limbs pressed and shifted on the backseat as hands slipped across hot, sweating skin.

Cloud broke away to gasp in a breath, and crushed his cheek against Sephiroth's as he squeezed his shoulders close. "I love you."

"I…" Sephiroth tried to begin, but was silenced by Cloud's lips fitting over his and sucking his tongue into another heated kiss. Something inside Sephiroth's mind was both relieved and saddened. He was somewhat relieved that his lack of reciprocal phrasing didn't turn Cloud off or make him upset.

But it was unacceptable that Cloud didn't even expect it anymore.

"Cloud…bab – …" Sephiroth tried to speak again, but Cloud wouldn't let his lips alone long enough to form the words.

"Sephiroth," Cloud groaned desperately and took his mouth when he tried to speak yet again. The General gave up on words and put his efforts into loving Cloud with his body instead.

He pushed one of Cloud's legs up, and was pleased when Cloud easily rested his foot on the headrest of the passenger seat. This left him exposed – or as exposed as he could be in the spacious, but still too-cramped backseat. He wetted one of his fingers before letting it slide carefully across the little opening between Cloud's cheeks.

Cloud gave a strangled little sound, and although it slid in relatively easily, it was not quite easy enough. Sephiroth could see Cloud's cheeks color, even in the dark.

He paused, not retracting his finger from Cloud's heated grip, but not yet pressing any farther either. Cloud opened his eyes, and tilted his head on the seat. "Mmnn… Do it, Seph. I need you. It'll be okay."

Sephiroth knew it would be okay, but just okay. His aching, almost frantic cock vehemently pointed out that just okay sex was still pretty awesome, and could easily be mistaken for extraordinary! …But a quick, okay fuck crammed and half clothed in the backseat of his tank wasn't how he pictured having Cloud after waiting for so very long.

"Should we just wait 'til we get home?" he said after a moment of torn thought.

"I can't wait anymore… I feel like I could fucking die…please…" Cloud whispered, but every word was clear to Sephiroth's understanding. Then, little Cloud put a postage stamp on Sephiroth's resolve for romance and sent it far, far away. He spread his legs farther apart and his navy eyes batted up at him in the dark, "Pretty please…?"

"Idea," Sephiroth declared and sat up on the seat, then laid down while pulling Cloud along with him. They shifted and squirmed and Cloud received a light smack on the ass to guide him to where Sephiroth wanted him to be. Then two long arms wrapped around his hips and held him in place.

Cloud was a little shy about where he ended up. He was straddling Sephiroth's face.

But before he could feel too embarrassed about it, there were lips working the base of his cock, then a tongue flicking across his balls before one was sucked gently into Sephiroth's mouth in a swirl of tingling heat. Cloud could feel his body tighten with anticipation as the tongue trailed from his balls up between his ass cheeks, then sink slowly in.

Cloud could easily recall the first time this had happened, just a quick flick of Sephiroth's tongue that had shocked his sensibilities to the core. Now he was more familiar with it, and judging from how often he indulged in fantasies involving Sephiroth's long, invasive tongue, he knew it wouldn't be too much longer before he began begging for this treatment by name.

He acclimated to the sensations then focused downward, where Sephiroth's hard cock was waiting, strained against those perfectly cut, washboard abs. Cloud nuzzled his face against it for a moment in a silent, sweet greeting, before propping it up and wrapping his fingers around the thick base. He enjoyed how Sephiroth's thighs spread a bit at the stimulation, both inviting him and asking for more. Cloud opened his mouth and let his tongue touch the slit, groaning a bit at the salty, hot taste gathered there.

He didn't waste much time teasing. He wanted to take that rounded tip it into his mouth, he wanted to tighten his lips and put some pressure on that cock, he wanted to swallow it down until it brushed the back of his throat. He lost himself for several seconds while he absolutely savored the taste and feel of Sephiroth in his mouth once again, all the while whimpering as a hot mouth and hands worked him over in time.

The infamous sixty-nine position had always seemed a bit ridiculous to him, something stupid, horny straight men somehow found endlessly humorous. But the curve of Sephiroth's cock fit so perfectly down his throat that he had to give credit where it was due. And feeling Sephiroth's fingers, lips and tongue only drove him onwards. The only thing he wanted more than to swallow down Sephiroth's heat was to let Sephiroth swallow his.

When long fingers began to circle and torment the maddening little spot inside of him, Cloud fought the urge to squirm away. Nothing was the same without Sephiroth, even that. While Cloud had become quite adept at fingering himself, he was always a bit too delicate and careful. Sephiroth however was vicious and unbending about it, almost punishing Cloud with the painful waves of pleasure he could create. One of Cloud's hands was clamped around the base of Sephiroth's cock, wet from the rolling drops of his own saliva. Without thinking too much about it, he moved that hand down between Sephiroth's legs instead.

Cloud felt his middle finger sink in, and Sephiroth made a loud noise behind him and all attacks on his erogenous zones paused. Cloud paused also and waited, sucking Sephiroth's cock slowly and quietly, almost frightened for a moment. Sephiroth then began to go back to work as if he decided that the unexpected invasion was allowed.

With a shiver, Cloud continued pushing his finger into Sephiroth.

It didn't feel different from himself. It was tight, and Cloud knew it was easily the most adorable little feature of Sephiroth's entire body. But one thing that was different was the heat. Sephiroth's temperature was always raging, but inside of him actually was similar to dipping one's finger into simmering water.

Cloud knew he was going to be inside Sephiroth one day, and he would have a turn watching his cock sink in and disappear. He moaned a bit at the mental imagining of submerging himself into that heat; slick with lube and good to go, Sephiroth watching him with a smile at the silly face he'd most likely make. He'd take it any way he could get it, but he wanted the General on his stomach with his ass arched up… Cloud wanted to see those beautiful back muscles tighten and flex.

Cloud snapped back into reality when Sephiroth gave his cock a loud, sucking pop, as though he knew what he was thinking about. With a guilty lick to Sephiroth's head, he looked over his shoulder in the dark. "…You like it?"

"'S'all good baby," were the only words Sephiroth could manage. Cloud added another finger and felt hands dig roughly into the soft flesh of his ass as Sephiroth's tongue darted around between his thighs.

Sephiroth's hips tightened and bumped up off of the seat when Cloud finally found his prostate. Cloud then moaned loudly when in retaliation, Sephiroth began to drive his tongue into Cloud mercilessly, jabbing and stroking his hypersensitive little spot. Giving his lover a taste of his own medicine, Cloud twisted his fingers ruthlessly, far rougher than he had ever been with any other part of Sephiroth's body, and fell in love with the thick, deep sounds it drove from his lover's chest.

Cloud discovered how fun it was to torture a loved one.

Sephiroth retracted his tongue from Cloud's ass and smacked the rounded curve sharply. "Baby, I'm about to pass out."

Cloud squealed in his throat, but didn't move despite the smack, and continued his work on Sephiroth's body. After a moment, he let his cock slip from between his lips. "Don't care."

That earned him another hard slap, this time on the other cheek. "I don't mean that, ya little fuckin' sadist. I'm burnin' up."

Cloud crawled off of Sephiroth because it was true; the tank's windows are fully steamed from their hot breath and body heat and a lack of any outside air. Both of their bodies were drenched with sweat, and it had finally crossed the border from sexy into discomfort.

Sephiroth shifted up, and took the keys from where he'd dropped them on the floor, and bent between the seats to start the tank. Cloud took the opportunity to kiss his muscled, beautiful ass, sucking it dangerously as all thoughts pointed towards chomping down upon it.

But before he could, the truck came on and a blast of cool air caused him to sigh lengthily in relief. Sephiroth took a moment to fuck around with the radio, then opened a zipper on his pack in the front seat and pushed a CD into the player. It was the one that Cloud had sent him.

"Did I ever thank you for sendin' me this?" Sephiroth asked softly, sitting next to Cloud and pulling him near. "And those pictures of us?"

"No," Cloud whispered, wrapping his arms around Sephiroth's neck and moving over his lap to straddle him.

"Thank you," Sephiroth said softly and kissed Cloud; both of their lips were covered in the tastes of sweat and each other, and both reveled in it.

They didn't move for a moment, they took that heartbeat to look at each other in the dark. It was funny to Cloud how he chose all the songs on the CD because they expressed his longing for Sephiroth, but now that he was finally in his arms again, the music sounded very different. Their meanings had changed from a far away longing, to an up close and personal passion.

Cloud loved Sephiroth for changing the way he heard things, just by being near. He loved him for his humor and meanness and his sweetness. He loved Sephiroth so much he could hardly contain it.

Cloud fell against him, kissing his lips and lifting his thighs up in invitation. Sephiroth rested one hand on the small of Cloud's back while the other lined up their bodies. When it was done, both of Sephiroth's arms wrapped around Cloud's waist and his hips popped up off of the seat, burying himself inside.

Cloud cried out against his shoulder. His universe zeroed in on that strange pain, and how fucking wonderful it was to be able to feel it. He let a strained, but happy groan vibrate against Sephiroth's neck, and the General let out a gust of breath he had apparently been holding, and a curse or two came out with it. The idling tank rumbled beneath them, seeming to purr. It probably missed the both of them in their absence as well.

Cloud sat up and pulled Sephiroth as close as he could get, squeezing his neck into a tight hug. Sephiroth closed his eyes and pressed his face against Cloud's shoulder as the smaller male began to rock gently on his lap.

Cloud's opening was slick from Sephiroth's tongue, and it continued to ease the way as he pressed down harder to take more of him in. He leaned back, angling that big cock against his most sensitive spots and grinding down gently.

The heady feeling of having Sephiroth exactly where he wanted him threatened to drown Cloud. He gave himself pleasure but not too much; he didn't want to lose himself and miss out on kissing, or watching, or listening to Sephiroth. His body burned for more, but what was left of his mind only wanted to draw this out for hours, days. But the biology of his own teenage body threatened to force his desire to overflow at any second.

Cloud wanted to be amazing for Sephiroth, not blow it by… blowing it.

Sephiroth could tell Cloud was trying to hold back, but the thought of seeing that boy lost in pleasure was enough to wring a thin stream of hot pre-come from the General. Cloud shuddered when he felt the heated liquid further slick him from the inside.

"Seph!" Cloud cried out as Sephiroth's hips rocked up off of the seat and in between his spread legs.

Sephiroth agreed with a smooth vibration in his chest, wanting to give him more than he seemed willing to take for himself. He pressed his feet into the carpeted floor and pushed up, bouncing Cloud slightly and feeling his tight body shudder and squeeze in response.

"I'm close," Sephiroth suddenly groaned, pushing hot, needy kisses onto Cloud's lips. They both knew he had staying power under more normal circumstances. Whether he wanted to reach that first peak quickly for Cloud's sake, or just a burning need to complete the act, Cloud loved him for it.

Gasping in utter relief, Cloud began to fist his erection quickly. "Oh yeah, please, yes, Seph…"

Sephiroth dug his fingers into his narrow hips, moving him into his thrusts which became harder and shorter, his body heavily addicted to the feeling of Cloud's. Sephiroth gasped when Cloud began to groan and whisper his name, and he could see his slim thighs clench in the desire to both run away from the pleasure and trap Sephiroth there forever.

"Seph, Seph!" Cloud gasped, and the General looked down just in time to see Cloud's erection desperately jerk and twitch, and then erupt. He watched several thick, milky streams flow out of Cloud and splatter against his stomach before his eyes clamped shut and he was taken along with him.

He felt himself fill Cloud, felt it drip back down onto his legs and between. Cloud didn't stop bouncing on his lap until they were both milked dry, but neither completely deflated. Finally, when Sephiroth's groaning became a bit more ragged, Cloud stopped and let his sensitive, hard cock slip from inside of him.

Suddenly it became a lot quieter in the tank, the buzzing in their ears was gone and all that was left was the music, and the gentle, airy sounds of their panting.

"God, I needed you," Cloud fell against Sephiroth, feeling like he could sleep for days.

Sephiroth sighed deeply and briefly enjoyed the afterglow while listening to the CD play.

Finally, he patted Cloud's ass until he shifted up and sat on the seat like a sleepy doll. Sephiroth pulled up his pants and buttoned them without bothering for cleanup. He wasn't nearly done with Cloud, and figured he could stand to drive home jizzy, since they'd be taking their clothes off the moment they walked into the door anyways.

Not wanting to be seen in the condition he was currently in, Sephiroth crawled up into the front seat. Cloud pulled on his pants quickly so he wouldn't leak all over Sephiroth's seats – no more than he already had, anyways. Once he had them on he crawled up after Sephiroth, who was already violently veering them out of the parking garage and onto the street with his chest and stomach still splashed with various liquids.

Although Cloud was relaxed enough to fall asleep on the spot, he was quickly getting his second wind. He dared to lean forward and lick Sephiroth's stomach spotless, letting his tongue play in his tight belly button, and the ridged crevices of that hard, smooth body.

Sephiroth took a few back alley roads, scaring the fuck out of some dawdling teenagers smoking weed in the process, but managed to get them back to the apartment in under ten minutes. Cloud had to hand it to his beloved, he had the art of driving in a hurry down to an art form.

And once inside, they fulfilled everything they'd both been pining for. It was slow and spread out across the bed, it was frantic and bent over against the kitchen counter, and it was also passionate under the hot shower water.

It was everything.

They finally came to rest in the dark beneath Sephiroth's sheets, hiding away from the world in more ways than one. Cloud could only make out the outlines of Sephiroth's features, aided by the soft, green light his eyes emitted. He touched Sephiroth's face and said something that Sephiroth took a few moments to try and make sense of, before he realized he just been spoken to in a different language.

Sephiroth smiled. "What was that?"

"I told you that 'I love you', in Nibelwyn," Cloud answered, and said the little phrase again. "They teach it in school in Nibelheim. I still remember a few things. There were only four hundred words, and fifty had to do with liquor. And five were only used to say, 'I love you'!"

"You people have your priorities in order," Sephiroth smiled, pushing back Cloud's shower-damp hair. Cloud just grinned and kissed him, while his smaller hands roamed idly all over his arms and chest.

Sephiroth was quiet for a moment, then he began to speak. Cloud blinked in shock at first, then listened carefully. The sound made his skin prickle, it was unlike anything he'd ever heard before.

Then he realized that it was a sound nobody on Earth had ever heard before.

It was slippery and ominous, as though Sephiroth had more than one tongue. It was also dark and sexy, but Cloud wasn't sure if it was due to the words themselves, or the speaker of them. Sephiroth let his lips brush against Cloud's cheek as the cadence rose and fell, as if he were speaking backwards, and in the form of short, seductive little questions.

When it was over, Sephiroth seemed bemused with himself. "…I've never spoken it."

Cloud didn't need ask what language it was, because he knew. But he licked his lips, and asked, "What did you say?"

Sephiroth opened his mouth to reveal it, then closed it. "Uh, it sounds dorky."

Cloud giggled at that. "Everything you say is dorky, just tell me."

Sephiroth sighed and smiled. "I've been waitin' so long for our reunion; the taste of your body makes me cry with the stars and ache for the seconds I was away," He then edited himself, "But the term for 'taste' means more like, 'chewing'. And 'cry' means more like… blowin' up the entire universe and killin' everything in it."

Cloud was speechless.

Sephiroth suddenly became very embarrassed. "It doesn't make much sense. I probably don't even know how to speak it right, anyways. Sorry."

Even though it was an odd declaration of affection, Cloud shook as his body bloomed with all the happiness that he could hold. "It does make sense, Seph…" He could still sense some discomfort from the General, and decided maybe some ribbing would lift his spirits. "But I can't help but notice that you won't just tell me that you love me. Not even in another language, huh?"

Sephiroth chuckled. "I would have, but there are no words for that…" Then he thought for a moment and said something that came out short and very cuddly sounding. He said it again and laughed.

"What?" Cloud questioned, kissing his laughter.

"I just called you my 'baby'. But it doesn't mean the same, it means like… 'larva'."

"How romantic," Cloud sighed, then rolled onto his back and pulled Sephiroth with him. He wanted to be the General's pillow that night, and smiled when a silver head laid down on his shoulder and long arms wound around him heavily.

After a few moments, Sephiroth sighed. "M'sorry I didn't just… say it, Cloud."

Cloud grinned. "That I'm your larva?"

Sephiroth shook his head, lifting up onto an elbow. He let out a breath of air, and smoothed away the hair from Cloud's face to see him. He focused on that face, the light and life in his eyes as his body tensed, ready to protect Cloud at all costs should … something go wrong.

"Cloud?" Sephiroth began carefully.

"…Yeah?" Cloud answered curiously as he slowly realized what was going on. He swallowed and hooked his hands around Sephiroth.

"I…" He gripped his fingers in Cloud's hair, not knowing why he wanted to suddenly rip and pull. But it was ripping and pulling out of love, not a desire to cause harm. But ripping and pulling would cause harm.

Maybe the lab was right all along. Maybe he was just a fucking animal from some other planet, some violent creature that needed to be caged and studied.

Oh, fuck it! He was here now, and he would find the balance he needed to find to be a normal man… if only to be able to love Cloud Strife as he deserved to be loved.

He let go of Cloud's hair and said, "I love you much."

Cloud slowly smiled.

"S-so much?... Fuck!" Sephiroth spat angrily, as animated as Cloud had ever seen him. "I've been meanin' to say, 'I love you so much,' for fuckin' months! And I fuckin' said, 'I love you much?'… goddamn it!"

Cloud was absolutely giddy as joyous tears rolled down his cheeks. "It doesn't matter! I love you, too!"

Sephiroth dropped his face down onto Cloud's chest. "Ugh. Why?"

Cloud curled every limb up around him, not saying anything. Eventually Sephiroth relaxed on top of him, and soon he was letting his fingers dance over Cloud's bare skin.

"I love you much," Cloud whispered before sleep threatened to pull him away entirely.

"…I love you so much," Sephiroth smiled, still embarrassed as he followed Cloud out to sleep.

CHAPTER IMAGES!

Vincent and Seph – http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-Ch21-Vincent-128746064

Snuggle Wuggles – http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/Blonde-Ambition-Ch21-Snuggle-128746651

A/N

1- I'm sorry for the amount of time this chapter took. I needed a hiatus for my personal life – not school, even though it's a popular scapegoat. I needed to realign with my mojo, and it took longer than I thought it would. I hope the content was worth the wait.

2- I always get so emotional when I write about Vincent and Sephiroth.

3- I'll say that there are probably only two more chapters before the first part of BA is finished, then we're moving on to the second. Don't cry, it'll be lots of fun.

4- :3


	22. Cheese and Rice

While they slept, they moved together like a slow tide. Sephiroth would spoon Cloud like a stuffed animal, then eventually drift away during the course of his sleep to sprawl in the opposite direction. Upon a drowsy semi-wakefulness, Cloud would realize his lover was in the same bed and cling to him. Eventually he'd get hot and push away, separating all over again.

It happened that way all night and for the better part of the day. Cloud didn't exactly remember when he woke up; for a long time he lingered on the border of sleep, too happy to move, think or speak. After being so drama-tized, he needed to just be for the moment.

He tottered on that dozy edge until thoughts refused to lay dormant and turned outward to the surrounding world. There were better things to do than sleep, especially when Sephiroth was already awake behind him.

His breath tickled lightly against the back of Cloud's neck, and whatever combination of genes that caused Sephiroth to emit that sweet, delicious scent were working full force. Cloud took a deep breath and held it. As soon as he quieted his own respiration, he could hear Sephiroth's heart beating in his chest along with the gentle, organic whir of the processes that powered his body.

This was the aliveness that Cloud had been craving.

As if his vital organs were aware that they were being admired, there was a guttural demand of hunger from Sephiroth's stomach. They both chuckled quietly, but didn't say anything and didn't move beyond Sephiroth's hand brushing Cloud's side.

But much like the owner, Sephiroth's stomach didn't particularly like being ignored, so it growled again. This time there was a tinny, high-pitched noise from Cloud's stomach. It seemed that their bodies had decided to do the first greeting of the day for them.

"Good morning," Cloud giggled anyways. "Hungry?"

"Mmhmm…" He nodded, cupping Cloud's face to ease it towards his.

Sephiroth's lips were smooth and warm, and a tongue was stroking against his own long before Cloud's brain caught up with the action. But Sephiroth's mouth led things so perfectly that Cloud didn't need to think, so he didn't – he just experienced.

He dazedly moved onto his back, spreading his thighs for Sephiroth to gently settle between. At the full feel of skin against skin, their morning erections became more than just involuntary. Cloud's arms locked around his shoulders, and his legs moved up to slide along the hard edge of his hips.

Sephiroth made a soft sound as Cloud's limbs encased him. He let his tongue play in Cloud's small, hot mouth while his hips fell into a grinding rhythm. Just as Cloud's breath began to quicken, the attack abated suddenly. Sephiroth seemed to draw himself back a bit, and left Cloud's lips to kiss his cheek.

"Hey," Cloud murmured. "More."

"More what?" Sephiroth asked distantly, his kisses becoming sloppy along Cloud's jaw as he began making more teasing suggestions with his hips.

"Everything," Cloud pushed Sephiroth's face with his nose until he was again within kissing range, and held his face so he couldn't draw back again. He kissed Sephiroth sweetly, inviting him to take whatever he may have desired.

Sephiroth needed this softness and this sweetness. He was no longer so afraid to admit that he love Cloud dearly, but was still a little afraid to mentally admit that he liked himself better as a result of that love.

"Goddamn it!" Sephiroth whispered suddenly, breaking their kiss to yank Cloud into a gripping hug.

"What?" Cloud paused at the sudden seriousness, his whole body going still. "…What's wrong?"

"It hit me."

Cloud's eyes went wide, thinking that he had accidentally kneed Sephiroth in the groin again. It happened to both of them from time to time, mostly to poor Sephiroth because Cloud was very quick to become overeager. There was no greater buzzkill in existence than a kneed crotch.

But since his legs were outside of Sephiroth's hips, he knew it had to be a non-physical statement. He whispered, "...What hit you, Seph?"

"Just," he swallowed uneasily. "This. I'm home. With you."

Cloud fingers stroked his sleek hair, moving it away from his face, "That's good, right?"

"Yeah," Sephiroth said softly, feeling stupid. "It's just finally hittin' me, that's all. It's a lot."

"Want me to cry with you?" Cloud cooed to him, already working up tears.

"I'm not gonna cry. I just missed you. I just…" After a brief search for any other way to say it, he let out a tiny puff of nervous air. "…love you."

Cloud cupped his face, pulling him closer. "I love you, too."

In the arms of his lover, the hindsight of Sephiroth's time at the Crater was bitterly miserable. The only way to cope with his loneliness was to assume the role of the more mature partner, which was very easy since Cloud was so vocal about his distress.

When he told Cloud to cheer up, he was telling himself to cheer up. When he tsked disapprovingly at Cloud's tears over the phone line, he was trying to force away his own. And when he told Cloud that it was impossible for him to return home for a quick visit, he was talking himself out of that very idea.

Sephiroth had been exhausted, bored, freezing cold, and under-stimulated in every way. It became so bad that he actually began to organize a flight back on a supply vessel to visit his lover. That is, until he thought of the post mission audit.

How was he going to justify going back to Midgar? And only for a day or two? How could he leave behind the thousands of people who wanted to be with their loved ones just as badly as he did?

What kind of leader was that?

Being a General gave Sephiroth a healthy sense of duty in mind, but in heart he was just a flesh and blood young man. He was still getting acquainted with his loving, passionate side, but he had always known that it was there waiting for someone to properly draw it out of him… he just didn't expect that that side of himself would so easily threaten to overpower the rest.

And that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. How else should he have felt? He had everything he wanted exactly where he wanted it. It was all wrapped up in a pretty blonde package that loved him before he ever knew love so good existed.

Sephiroth expressed these feelings in a kiss that instantly overwhelmed Cloud. He had asked for more, but was barely able to keep up with the hot, sensual waves of Sephiroth's mouth, the heated brush of his hands, the friction of his hips. He whimpered into the kiss while his hands dug into Sephiroth's arms, almost in panic.

As usual, Cloud begged for rough treatment but turned away shyly when it was presented. That bipolar coyness was something else that Sephiroth cherished about him and had missed terribly. Sephiroth had never gotten to care for or coddle anything before. He was used to teasing and being dominant in whatever he did, but never before could he be so indulgent with his victims.

And Cloud was the perfect victim. Sephiroth lived to make Cloud smile, laugh, blush, and whine. To at the same time be sweet to him, to touch him, kiss him, please him.

Nothing felt better than making him feel good.

Cloud's fingers gripped and scratched against Sephiroth's back as he began to twist and pull beneath him, gasping short breaths into their kiss. The semi-panicked writhing had a surprisingly powerful effect on Sephiroth, and he groaned as he felt his cock begin to throb and weep against Cloud's.

Cloud wrapped his legs tightly around him, and gave another muffled little cry. Sephiroth quickly realized that Cloud was about to come, and released his mouth with a harsh suck of air, "Not yet!"

Cloud gasped and shot one trembling hand down to his groin. Sephiroth was about to become seriously disappointed, but then realized Cloud wasn't stimulating himself to completion, but instead gripping his base to obediently stifle it.

Sephiroth felt like high fiving him, "Nice save!"

"Your worth waiting for," Cloud whispered shakily with a smile on his swollen lips. He slowly released himself when the danger of orgasm had passed, "…But hurry up."

Cloud's smiled softened and he leaned over on his elbow, slowly turning himself over onto his stomach. Sephiroth allowed it, and gently guided him over the rest of the way.

He drank in the sight of the narrow, soft skinned back complete with patterns of the mattress and sheets indented. Sephiroth smiled as he ran his hand over them, then kissed both of Cloud's softly protruding shoulder blades.

He let his lips move down the graceful ridge of his spine, sending a shock of wiggles through Cloud's body that culminated in a loud chuckle. Sephiroth waited until he was calm again then squeezed his ass between his fingers, pushing up on the soft flesh.

"Hot little ass," he admired with a possessive growl.

"No it isn't!" Cloud denied, smiling over his shoulder. "I should get implants. They make an incision below the crease, and," he made a wet shloop sound, " - slide some extra bum right in there."

"Over my dead body," Sephiroth warned, kissing one cheek. "You'll never cut yourself open like that. If you want a bigger ass, do squats."

"Is that why Zack does those...?" Cloud wondered.

Sephiroth didn't reply, he was busy with pressing Cloud's cheeks together and kissing along the tight seam it created. He marveled at the creaminess of Cloud's natural skin color that immediately turned to a more golden hue on his lower back in the shape of panties. He had told Sephiroth how he'd acquired these peculiar tan lines, and he wished he could have seen Cloud in his little Speedo while he was still in swim class. The contrast wasn't quite as bold as it used to be, but Sephiroth ran his tongue along the border between lightly sun kissed skin and baby white smoothness.

He slipped his fingers between Cloud and the mattress and hefted him up onto his knees. Cloud easily followed, his limbs gathering themselves fluidly as he settled in front of Sephiroth on the bed. He leaned back, resting his head against Sephiroth's shoulder and feeling the hardness of his body.

Sephiroth kissed the soft, salty skin of Cloud's neck while his hands became busy on the stretch of his abdomen. There had been changes, and although his mouth had been all over Cloud's body the night before, he still wanted to thoroughly map the new contours out with his hands.

He explored the ridges of Cloud's collarbone, his shoulders and chest, pausing to pull at both peachy nipples. He felt the gentle push of Cloud's ribs through muscle, and the flat, toned board of his narrow stomach.

Cloud was purring. He leaned and arched against those warm hands as they petted every inch of him. His head was dizzy with happy arousal and his body ignited under his beloved's touch.

Sephiroth's fingers pressed into his hips tightly, his thumbs pushing forward. "On your hands?"

Cloud moaned in understanding and leaned forward, putting his weight on them. He felt a drip of sweat roll down his neck when Sephiroth widened the space between his thighs, giving him no choice but to turn his ass up.

Then through the sweat there was a shiver as Sephiroth settled behind him on the bed. Cloud felt his hot breath spread across his lower back when he was asked, "You okay?"

Cloud shuddered again, his legs and arms breaking out in a rash of goose bumps. "Awesome."

"From last night, I mean," Sephiroth clarified, running a hand down the inside of his leg. "You hurt?"

"I'm fine, Pretty." Cloud bucked his ass up, hitting something he hoped was Sephiroth's face. It was.

Sephiroth didn't waste any more time with worrying, but hungrily pressed his tongue to Cloud's opening. It was a bit red from the long night before, and he resigned to giving Cloud a Cure when they were through. He would have given him one then, but he knew from experience that there was general numbness for a few minutes afterwards, and the last thing he wanted Cloud to be was numb.

Cloud gasped and moaned from above, looking back to watch Sephiroth working on him. His nose was pressed into the dimple of his lower back, and every so often there was a red flash of tongue to match the hot, moist sensations that pushed gently in and out of him.

It was good. It was dirty. It was good because it was dirty. And it was amazing because they were in love.

Sephiroth glanced up when he felt his stare. He easily held it as he worked, his glowing eyes never blinking. Cloud blushed, both in love with and envious of that confidence. He wanted to be more like Sephiroth in every way, so he held the stare right back. It escalated into a challenge when those smoky green eyes exuded that smug smile that usually made Cloud feel like a mere cadet in the presence of a General.

But his General was rimming him. This cadet was allowed to stare all he wanted!

He swallowed and craned his neck up higher, watching in a way that may have easily been mistaken aloof or even cattily unimpressed.

Sephiroth dragged his tongue through the valley between his cheeks, showing the entire long length of it before he pushed it back inside.

Then Cloud's eyes disappeared suddenly, and he pressed his face into the pillow. Sephiroth won the battle, but was slightly disappointed with his victory. That was, until both of Cloud's hands snaked back, and his long fingers pulled his own cheeks so far apart that his little hole opened up like a flower.

Sephiroth paused in surprise, and then heard Cloud's voice from the pillow, "Deeper."

And the victory went to Cloud, after all. Sephiroth was never more turned on by losing.

He took a breath and pushed his tongue in, holding that ass open so Cloud could go back to his former position on his hands. He pushed his tongue in as deeply as he could get it, and then began to search. After a few moments Cloud began to quake.

Sephiroth felt the tight muscle pulse around his tongue as he worked the little spot that drove Cloud to hysterics. He swirled and lapped at it until he felt like his lungs would implode from lack of air. He couldn't get enough in with his nose pressed to Cloud's back, and he couldn't taste that sweet spot if he wasn't that close. With a deep, reluctant gasp Sephiroth came up for air, quickly filling Cloud with two fingers and working them the way his tongue had been.

Cloud cried out hard when he felt the larger intrusion enter. His narrow back flexed as he worked his hips with Sephiroth's fingers, trying to get away and get more at the same time. He shifted suddenly on the bed, and before Sephiroth's lust hazed mind could comprehend what he was doing, a wet tongue was working over his dripping erection.

Cloud licked the salty liquid from the slit and curled his hand around the base. He looked up at Sephiroth for a moment before his eyes swept closed and he began a shallow, quick suction on the tip of his cock.

"Oh shit," Sephiroth cursed absentmindedly, spotting the tube of Pleasureglide on the floor. It had been carelessly dropped the night before and had spun entirely out of reach. He needed to stop Cloud's attentions to retrieve it… but he really didn't want to do that.

Forgetting about the lube and utterly mesmerized, Sephiroth pushed his fingers quickly in and out of Cloud, making him arch himself in pleasure. He felt the tremor of a groan in Cloud's throat as he was swallowed down deeper.

"Shit," Sephiroth blurted again. He looked at the lube that was so near, but so very far away from Cloud's mouth... and lips… and the little curl he did with his tongue...

Just come here! Sephiroth mentally screamed at the lubricant.

And to his utter astonishment, it did. It shook once before sliding across the floor.

As recently as the current year, the labs all but tortured Sephiroth to prod out a latent ability to manipulate objects with his mind. The General felt like a rock; he was simple, solid and linear in thoughts and feelings. He knew some people were telekinetic, but it always sounded a little bit like bullshit to him. And after all those years of torture in the lab to try and get him to perform it… all those tests, all that emotional upheaval…

After all that, there it was. It was happening because he wanted to fuck. It was happened because he wanted it to happen.

When Sephiroth came to a higher awareness and began to over think the situation, the lube came to a halt on the floor.

Cloud's little moans wavered a bit, and he peered up as he sensed his lover's attentions were lying elsewhere. Sephiroth quickly resumed thrusting his fingers, passion almost immediately filling him as his desire to connect with his lover blasted through his senses.

When Cloud went back to work, he then glanced discreetly at the lube. Come here?

It did a flip on the floor and scuttled closer. Sephiroth hated the notion of invisible hands, it had made him put a cover over his head on many nights alone – but if he could control the hands… that wasn't a bad thing at all.

The lube flung up from the hardwood floor to smack into his arm and land on the mattress. Then there was no denying that, son of a fucking bitch, he was telekinetic. What it meant, he wasn't certain. But he'd be goddamned if he was going to tell a single soul.

Pleased with his new secret, Sephiroth put it out of his mind as he popped open the top of the tube and squeezed some oil out onto his fingers. Cloud let go of Sephiroth's cock with a wet kiss, not wondering where the lube had come from. He only watched with a trusting smile as Sephiroth moved his slick fist over himself.

He pushed Cloud over onto his back, smiling wickedly at the little shriek he gave. He slid his fingers into Cloud one final time, spreading the excess lube until he was satisfied that his lover was ready.

He pushed one of Cloud's slim thighs up, unable to resist running a hand over everything that was presented there. The round curve of his ass, his tiny opening that was shiny with slickness, his tightened balls and long, hard cock. Cloud gasped raising his other leg to wrap around Sephiroth and pull him closer.

He positioned himself, pressing against Cloud for a moment before pushing in. He relaxed when he felt it, and concentrated to maintain that relaxation and not fight the welcome intrusion. Sephiroth watched the tight opening expand wide around him with only minor pain catching Cloud's breath.

Eventually the smaller body opened up completely, and the larger one settled inside. Sephiroth leaned down to kiss Cloud's cheek, and never feeling shame in disclosing his inner sexual dialogue to his lover, he said, "This is my favorite part."

Cloud's brain was full of sexual smog and had to work to comprehend those words. They were incredibly honest, so honest that it almost made Cloud uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and looked up, breathless at the beauty that was bowed tightly before him.

"Do you really love me?" Cloud asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Sephiroth didn't even need to think about it, "'Cause you're where I belong."

Cloud's arms opened up like a child's, and Sephiroth came down onto his elbows to be embraced and kissed. Cloud could never say in words how happy it made him that Sephiroth loved him for the exact same reason that he loved Sephiroth.

Sephiroth slowly worked in at an angle that lined up with Cloud's delicate spine. He gasped with the slightly stretched pain, but loved the man inside him and the knowing way he touched the most intensely pleasurable spot on his body. Sephiroth took Cloud's air away entirely when he sped up, wrapping one long arm underneath him and holding him tightly against his smooth chest.

It was impossible to recover or hide from the pleasure for even a second, because Sephiroth was making him feel it, all of it. There was the firm, steady slap of wet skin, and the gentle grunt of effort and passion from Sephiroth with each hard push. Cloud clamped his eyes shut and fought for air.

"Cloud," Sephiroth murmured against his forehead, his hips almost coming to a stop. "Breathe."

Cloud immediately inhaled and felt his lungs burn with the need for air. The air escaped on a desperate shout as Sephiroth continued to move inside him, and it felt like the entire world was moving in and out along with him. He crashed down like a tidal wave that never lost momentum, and Cloud was enthralled to the limits of coherency.

"Lemme hear you," Sephiroth said, pushing Cloud's legs up higher, creating an even deeper angle and pushed in hard, his cock dragging against all the right places inside of Cloud. His entire body tensed around the intrusive pleasure and he gave up on control and let go. He trusted Sephiroth enough to hold him together, or at least gather the pieces when he came crashing apart.

For Sephiroth, it was the ultimate aphrodisiac to experience the emotional and flamboyant young man shamelessly ripped apart and cut wide open by the power of their union. That unique voice was mewling, moaning, proclaiming how good their physical love felt. It wrung the same out of Sephiroth, he gasped and murmured gentle threats of passion against Cloud's ear.

"I'll never stop," he warned.

"I won't let you stop," Cloud hissed, one of his hands finding Sephiroth's on the bed and gripping onto it. He moved with Sephiroth, rolling his back off the bed and rubbing himself against his hard stomach.

He reared up and kissed Sephiroth until saliva seeped down his chin. He didn't care. He wanted everything of Sephiroth on him, in him. He wanted to be covered in everything that Sephiroth was.

Moments passed, each one becoming more frantic than the last. Cloud's body sung with unreleased tension, pulled tight to the edge of snapping. Sephiroth's arms cradled him like smooth, hot vines of muscle while his athletic body never seemed to tire of working Cloud's.

Cloud wanted so much more, but his body couldn't take another minute. He cupped Sephiroth's bicep and squeezed it before moving his hand down to his forearm. He pulled his hand and encouraged it towards his erection.

Sephiroth released his mouth with a lick of his lips. "Ready?"

"Always," Cloud panted with a warm, tender smile and worked himself hard against Sephiroth, wanting a mutual culmination. The General mentally chuckled at the extra effort; Cloud didn't need to do a single thing but smile like that.

Sephiroth hissed sharply as he wrapped his fingers around Cloud's hardness, feeling the charged throb and the hot dew weeping from the tip. Cloud put his hand over Sephiroth's and guided him, his back arching up like an angry feline's as the perfect rhythm was found.

Sephiroth held his arm around Cloud, forcing him to stay arched and keeping his perfect little ass in just the right place. Sephiroth felt Cloud clench with each pass of their twined fingers around his erection, working him towards a teeth-grinding climax. Sephiroth pushed through the fluttering opening, hardly able to hold himself up.

"You're so…I'm –" Cloud cut off his own words with a growl of pleasured agony. The hand that had been laced over Sephiroth's shot away to help steady himself, his entire body pulled to the very edge of tension until it finally shattered with a wordless scream.

Their experience together was by no means vast, but Sephiroth had never heard Cloud scream. It shocked the climax right out of him. He kneaded Cloud's spurting cock in his hand while he rode the smaller body hard for a moment or two, wringing himself on that beautiful ass as it pulsed around him.

Sephiroth shivered audibly, trembling and suddenly needing to be out of Cloud before he screamed, too. His hypersensitive cock slipped out wetly, and he collapsed onto his side into a heap of long, overwhelmed limbs. He curled in on himself slightly while he tried to recover, staring at Cloud with unfocused eyes.

Cloud was shuddering with one arm covering his face. For a few moments, only their gasps for air filled the room.

Eventually there was a giggle. Green eyes focused to find Cloud gathering himself up, sweaty and rumpled and as disheveled as he'd ever seen him. Sephiroth on the other hand was practically curled in the fetal position with his cheeks flushed and sweaty, and his silver hair for once not looking red carpet ready.

They laughed. They'd completely decimated one another, and now they were elated, sated and full of endorphins. They were naked and covered in each other's come. They had an entire week to spray each other with more. Life couldn't have been more beautiful.

Cloud crawled the short distance to Sephiroth and kissed him, his soft tongue licking the sweat off of his upper lip. "Tired?"

"Starving. Wanna go out?"

"That sounds awesome, but..." Cloud brushed Sephiroth's hair off of his face. "Can I have some more?"

Sephiroth's eyes popped open. "Say what?"

Cloud then took Sephiroth's larger hand and slid it down his body. His green eyes widened at what he felt – which was rock solid proof of the stamina of youth. "Shit, Cloud..."

Just then, the punky, unwelcome ringer of Cloud's cell phone chimed loudly. Sephiroth snatched his hand back, glaring at Cloud's phone on the floor, "No phones on vacation."

"It'll go off in a minute. Who's calling? I don't even know anybody." Cloud gave an uncaring wave towards it. He wrapped his legs around one of Sephiroth's, pressing his miraculously rock hard cock against it.

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes as Cloud smiled and leaned up for a kiss. His eagerly puckered lips ran into a finger, though. The General raised an eyebrow at him, his tone patient yet commanding, "No more until you turn it off."

Cloud ducked his head sheepishly. Very reluctantly, he scooted to the edge of the bed, just as the ringing of his phone stopped.

"Figures!" Cloud pouted, throwing a sour look over his shoulder. He picked it up just as it began to buzz and sing again.

"Cloud," Sephiroth complained.

"I'm trying!" He wailed, and quickly opened it up to silence it before he saw who was so insistently trying to reach him. "…Shit. It's my mom…"

"Don't answer it!"

Cloud fretted, biting his lip. He couldn't just 'fuck you' button his own mother... she would no doubt know he had done it. He hadn't been calling her lately, but he also hadn't been ignoring her, either. If he didn't answer, she would know something was up. There was also the possibility that something was wrong, maybe even an emergency…

… But on the other hand, he was fucking horny. The kind of horny they name constellations after. And Sephiroth was so naked, so sexy, so delicious…

"Stop jackin' off and make up your mind, already," Sephiroth grunted.

Cloud's hand flew away from his groin and he sighed in resignation, "It'll just take five seconds, Seph."

Sephiroth gave a juvenile roll of his eyes and folded his hands behind his head, unwittingly making himself all the more visually appealing, "Fine."

Cloud wanted to hurl his phone out the window and hop back on. But he decided to get rid of his mother once and for all so he could fully concentrate on his beloved for the next seven days.

It might actually take that long to kill his erection.

"Hi mom," he answered quietly, folding his legs on the bed. "Sorry for not picking up before, I was in class. I have another one in like five seconds so – "

"Is that so?" she interrupted.

Cloud's fake smile fell a bit. "…Yes."

"Cloud Duffy Strife," she announced. "Where the fuck have you been?"

His skin prickled at the use of his full name. "Um… Wh-what do you mean?"

"I'm just wondering," she said with sudden casualness, which was dangerous. "Just wondering where my son's been for the past couple of weeks… I haven't heard from you. So where have you been, Clow? Where have you been?"

Cloud's eyes were like saucers. "I've been… here and there…"

"Or at the Northern fucking Crater, risking your goddamn life!?"

"Momma, I – !"

"What the hell were you thinking!?"

"Drum duty – !"

"You're a baby! How the fuck could they send you there – how could Sephiroth send you there?! And why the hell did you go without talking to me first?!"

Cloud cupped the phone with both hands and whispered in an attempt for privacy, because something about having this conversation in front of a General was humiliating, "…Because I… I was assigned to do it, mom. And I wanted to. And I did a good job! I-I did really well!"

"What if you were hurt?! What if you were killed?!" She didn't pause to light a new cigarette, she merely talked right through it. "You'd be a fucking popsicle right now, and how the hell would I find out?! With some fucking telegram telling me my baby son's been fucking murdered at the Northern Crater?! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!"

"Mom, it's not about you!" Cloud heard himself shout. "I'm a grown m-man! And I'm in the army now, s- so you'll just have to get used to the idea that I'm gonna be in dangerous situations!"

Cloud had puffed out with pride, but began to wither as his mother began a tirade of expletives and threats, mostly aimed towards Sephiroth, President Shin-Ra, the SOLDIER program, and Cloud's gonads.

"Why didn't you tell me!?" she repeated, anger and some strange brand of hurt in her voice.

Because you'd act like this, Cloud frowned. But he said, "I don't know, mom. I just... didn't want you to worry. And I didn't want you to try to talk me out of it."

"So you can feel like a big man, marching off to some meaningless conflict that you have no reason to be apart of?"

"…Kind of."

"Well fuck you," April Strife declared.

Cloud snorted. "How did you even find out?"

"Cathy next door told me."

"How'd she find out?"

"You're on the front page of the fucking newspaper. Nice hat."

Cloud gasped so shrilly that Sephiroth shot up in bed, before realizing it was just one of his lover's noisy mannerisms and rolled over onto his stomach with a grunt. "It was that stupid reporter! Mom, I was betrayed by someone you know named Simon!"

She laughed a little at that. "Well according to him, you're 'a budding war hero with tears in your eyes and the grit of battle still clinging to your boots'. Not to mention, 'the young gay lover of a very elite, very nameless Shin-Ra military professional'."

Cloud bellowed a moan of embarrassment. It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd just come out and said it was Sephiroth, but that sounded like he was the cabana boy for some crusty old officer.

His mother was pitiless, "You fucking deserve to be outed for keeping a secret from me. And didn't I teach you not to talk to the press?"

"When in my entire life would you ever have had to teach me not to talk to the press?!" Cloud demanded loudly.

"Don't talk to the press…" Sephiroth mumbled, his arms folded beneath his chin. Cloud reached out to pet the top of his silver head, and Sephiroth shifted closer until he was lying on Cloud's thigh.

"Well now you know, shit for brains," his mother clucked, then took a long puff of her cigarette. "…Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Cloud sighed.

"…Did you get shot at?"

"It was a battle, mom," he said after a few moments. "I may have like, been in the way of a bullet, but I wasn't shot directly at. Ya know?"

"Oh my god," April moaned wearily.

"I'm alright though, I swear!" Cloud said firmly. "I um… the only thing that actually hurt me were these pieces of shrapnel, because there was this SOLDIER and a Wutainese dude fighting, and the SOLDIER cut the dude's sword in half, and all the metal kind of sprayed me. That sort of hurt, but then the camp doctors pulled all the metal out and poured alcohol on it. It hurt worse than actually getting cut!" Cloud babbled excitedly. "And then they used a Cure on me, so I don't even have scars or anything."

"Those things actually work?" April sounded surprised.

"Mom, magic is the craziest thing you'll ever see. But then there was this guy I know, Reno – "

Cloud paused and Sephiroth tensed at the mention of that name. Slowly Cloud resumed scratching Sephiroth's scalp and brushing his fingers along his jaw line while explaining to his mother how Reno had been almost fatally injured after an enormous bullet went straight through him.

He told her how he ate monsters, and how he killed a terrifying demon, to which she seemed extremely impressed. He told her about the men he stayed with, about marching, and about his first ride on an airship.

By the time he was done speaking to her about it, Sephiroth was dozing and she was considerably calmer.

"And you're alright?" she probed again, her tone soft.

"I'm totally okay," Cloud repeated. He'd been flushed angrily during the beginning of their conversation, but his face heated up much more intensely at her gentle concern. "I'm back home. I might have to drum again someday, but I'll tell you next time, I promise. I just didn't want to scare you."

She hummed, her anger having been spent. It had taken Cloud until that moment to realize that all of his life, her frequent anger and bitchiness were all just forms pure love. He wondered why he didn't see it before.

April lit another cigarette. "I was thinking about something. Something sort of big. You can tell me to go to hell if you want to, but hear me out first."

Cloud's mother wasn't a woman who asked permission to do anything, least of all from him. "…Okay."

"How would you feel about me moving closer?"

Cloud gasped loudly again, waking Sephiroth up with a violent start. He groaned a little bit in distaste.

"Shhh!" Cloud shushed him, then cupped his handsome face affectionately when he was given a sleepy scowl. The angry look evaporated and Sephiroth kissed the palm of his hand, then rolled off of Cloud's lap to settle on the bed beside him. Cloud then turned his attention back to his mother. "…Do you mean it, mom?"

"It was a thought. You're the only baby I have, and… I miss you. Besides, they're dying for teachers in Junon, and that's a hell of a lot closer."

"Fuck Junon!" Cloud laughed merrily. "Come to Midgar!"

"Midgar makes me absolutely sick. But I loved Junon when I was younger, and I'd be able to drive an hour and see you whenever. And feed you, too. In this newspaper picture your friend Cam looks like he could snap you like a twig."

"Mom, I've gained like twenty pounds since I've been gone!" Cloud roared. "I just grew a little bit too, so it like evened it out!"

"You did," Sephiroth confirmed.

She wasn't impressed. "Whatever. How would you feel about that?"

Cloud tried to find a reason why he wouldn't he happy about having his mother closer, and couldn't find a single one. "They have plenty of Strifes there, they don't need us anymore. Come closer… you sort of wanted to move to a bigger city too when you were my age, right? I know I messed up some of your plans, but you're still a super hot female! Take a chance you stupid ho – " Cloud lost his composure and began singing one of his mother's favorite songs. He'd always hated it, but was forced to listen to it approximately one million times in the car.

Instead of laughing, she was lost in contemplation and thoughtfully hummed. "I might. I'll have to think a little bit more about it."

Cloud spent several more minutes catching up with his mother about her work at the school, his aunts and cousins, and the state of his grandmother's health before they said their loving goodbyes and hung up. For good measure, he also turned the phone off.

Cloud peered at Sephiroth's form that rose and fell under the blanket. It was supposed to take exactly five seconds, but it took a little over an hour to smooth things over. His mother had succeeded in temporarily slaying his genitals, but that could easily be fixed. In fact, he felt himself twitch a little as he draped himself over Sephiroth's back.

He kissed Sephiroth's ear and whispered, "Wake up!"

Cloud giggled when his appeal was met with an exaggerated snore. Sephiroth glanced sleepily over his shoulder. "We should get dressed."

"But I don't want to get dressed yet," Cloud flirted, snaking his way under the blanket.

"Your mommy killed the mood for me," Sephiroth teased, sticking out his tongue when Cloud smacked his arm.

"I had to answer! …We can get something to eat soon… I can be quick." He rolled onto his back with a grin and Sephiroth followed.

"I know all about how quick you can be."

"It's hard to last when you're so damn hot…" Cloud trailed off as his brain caught up with his mouth, and blushed a little at his own boldness. Even though it was a simple compliment, it was an aggressive one. He finished though, "You look so hot when you're fucking me."

"I should blindfold you then," Sephiroth countered, not missing a beat.

Cloud grinned. "Only if I can blindfold you first!"

Sephiroth was just about to respond when yet another cell phone chime interrupted him.

"I turned mine off. That one's yours!" Cloud declared triumphantly.

Sephiroth cursed and scowled at his cell phone as it buzzed around on his nightstand. He seriously considered crushing it into pieces, then vaporizing it – he had his eye on a new one, anyways – but he didn't want to risk losing the archive of pictures Cloud had sent him over the past three months. Something about losing those pictures would be slightly heartbreaking, even though he had the real thing to touch and hold.

So instead of destroying the stupid phone, he rolled over onto his side and glared at the number daring to intrude. Cloud began to grope his ass from behind, and Sephiroth swatted his hand away. If the call was work related, he wanted to be as serious as possible to make sure the caller became damn clear on the definition of personal leave.

But while it was someone he worked with, he knew it wasn't work related. He heaved a sigh and answered it, "What?"

"What? What do you mean, 'what'?" Nurse Rhonda demanded. "Where the hell have you been all day? And why haven't you called me yet?"

"I've been sleepin'," Sephiroth grunted.

"Sleeping or fucking?"

"Both."

"I'll make it quick, then. You're coming to my place tomorrow."

Sephiroth groaned like a teenager, "Ron, I just got back. I don't even wanna put pants on."

Then Rhonda's deep voice rose into a strange and cooing octave. "But you have to! There are two people who really want to meet you!"

"But I don't wanna meet anybody," Sephiroth very nearly whined, crinkling his nose. Cloud laughed silently and poked it.

"You want to meet these people."

"Who are they?"

"I'll give you a hint," Rhonda offered. "They popped out of Julie's twat two weeks ago."

It was Sephiroth's turn to give a sharp, disbelieving gasp, "Fer real?"

Cloud pressed his ear to the other side of the cell phone so he could hear what was going on. Sephiroth held the phone a couple inches from his ear to let him listen in.

"Yes sir! So since everybody's back in town at once, we're having a baby meet and greet tomorrow at two. Julie wanted a headcount so she could do the whole hostess thing. Just um… smile and do what she asks. You know everyone will probably get wasted," Rhonda then sighed. "And even though we realize you have a lot of ass to plow since you've just gotten back, try and make the effort to put some pants on and swing by, okay? I miss you."

Sephiroth grinned, but couldn't stop his cheeks from going hot pink. "Yeah, you know we'll definitely be over. I think Cloud's pretty excited by the idea…"

Indeed, Cloud was doing a silent jig behind Sephiroth on the bed. Playing with babies and drinking with Zack were high on the list of things that made an ordinary day extraordinary. Then Sephiroth's eyes widened a bit when the little jig became more of a hip rolling thrust.

Hang up, he mouthed against Sephiroth's cheek, his fingers running up into his hair.

"Well crap Ron, I gotta go – " He paused in talking to open his mouth wide in a silent moan when Cloud pulled the handful of hair sharply, " – the door. Someone's at the door. See ya tomorrow."

"Alright, we're counting you two in then." Rhonda then began saying something about her new children that Sephiroth completely missed out on. Cloud was kissing the length of his neck, focusing heavily on the little tickle spot right behind his jawbone.

Rhonda then asked Sephiroth an unknown question twice before he breathed with a small shrug, "Yeah, totally."

"I knew you would agree with me!" she cawed.

"Totally," Sephiroth repeated, biting his lip when Cloud's fingers gripped his ass. He let a shuddering gasp slip out, "Ron, there's somethin' …burnin' on the stove."

Cloud kissed his lips silently before mouthing again, Hang up!

Rhonda began saying more things. Cloud continued his seduction assault. Sephiroth finally blurted, "I'm hangin' up now, Ron. Cloud needs me to fuck him."

Cloud gasped in shock. That was his teacher! But she only chirped agreeably on the other line, "Okay. See you tomorrow!"

The General turned off his phone off before descended upon the Cadet, devouring every single inch of him.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was so relaxed and happy it felt as though he were wearing Crisco beneath his clothes. He shot his hand out and tugged Sephiroth's into his own, admiring the outfit he'd picked out for him.

Since it was spring, Cloud dressed Sephiroth in a breezy white cotton button up with a cute, floppy hood attached to it. He rolled the sleeves up to Sephiroth's biceps, then slapped a pair of tight jeans on him. He himself went for his old black wife beater and the Gucci pants he bought with his magical, unexpected prize money for going to the Crater.

He modeled them for Sephiroth, who greatly approved. That is, until he found out where the money for them came from.

Then, all hell broke loose.

"It was my money!" Cloud defended. "I wanted to get something cute before I left to come home to!"

"It was contract money, Cloud! You do not spend it until you get back from the mission!" Sephiroth roared militantly, making Cloud's eyes tear up a little bit in bashful confusion. He mentally sighed at the tears, and forced himself to speak gently. "Next time, don't touch it 'til you come home. Promise me."

"Fine," Cloud answered uneasily. "…What's the money for?"

"Your life," Sephiroth murmured. "Or if you don't croak, buying hot little pants from Gucci."

Cloud's eyes widened when he realized that he had read that in the contract he signed with Zack during his briefing in Nibelheim. At the time, he didn't understand it. Like most things he didn't understand, he put it from his mind entirely to focus on other things – Zack's hot ass, for one.

All military personnel from Generals to Cadets were given compensation for missions. Cloud hadn't considered the drumming to be a mission, but more of an exclusive school assignment.

It was a mission, though. Cloud had been on a mission. When he was handed the money from the Dean, it wasn't a 'thank you'. It was legal compensation for his time and, potentially, his life.

If he had died at the Crater, Shin-Ra would have left April Strife with that 500 gil to bury him with, and that would have been the end of Shin-Ra's obligation to the Strife family. Or rather, a pair of hot little red Gucci jeans to bury him in.

Cloud became disgusted… then morbidly curious. If he was paid 500 gil for a mission as a cadet… what the hell did Sephiroth make per mission?!

"As if I would tell you."

"C'mon!" Cloud begged. "At least tell me what I'll be making when I'm a Third!"

Sephiroth sighed. "Thirds make five grand."

"Thirds!? Thirds make five grand per mission!?"

"It's not a whole lot of money, Cloud. That's why you don't spend it 'til you come back," Then Sephiroth rolled his eyes. "Ya never know when a lull will happen, 'specially when you're a brand new Third. You might end up livin' off of one mission cut for a few months. You gotta be smart about it."

Cloud was too busy being dazzled by large numbers, "What do second classes make?"

"Tell ya what," Sephiroth smiled, pulling an arm around him. "You don't worry about what anyone makes. All you worry about is trainin' your sweet little ass off for when you get into SOLDIER."

Cloud nodded. "You're right. I don't need some pair of pants to come home to, anyways. I'll just do my best to come home to you!"

He stroked Cloud's cheek. "If you really want somethin', I'll get you a mission present."

"You don't have to do that," Cloud blushed. "You might spoil me."

"Uh, you came pre-packaged that way," Sephiroth huffed. "And besides, anythin' I buy you before your mission I'll be takin' out of your tight ass after the mission. With interest."

Cloud couldn't wait to be a SOLDIER.

They enjoyed a late lunch together at a small Gongagan restaurant with an attached arcade. Sephiroth had been fantasizing about pizza for weeks, and Cloud was okay with anything that was greasy and processed. Sephiroth took a large meat pizza all for himself, and Cloud finished a medium full of vegetables and sausage.

Once they had eaten everything in sight, they sat in silence together for a long while. Cloud was so full he could barely move, and needed the time to digest. Sephiroth was content to watch the little children play noisy games in the tiny arcade.

Their hands idly touched in the center of the table as they learned the true meaning of relaxation. It was mental, physical, spiritual.

They had found God in a dirty, noisy pizza parlor.

"We need to commemorate this day," Cloud finally said.

"How?"

Cloud put his fists under his chin and grinned. "I've been thinking a lot, and I really want a tongue stud."

Sephiroth's eyebrows rose. "Won't that hurt?"

Cloud shrugged a shoulder and began to play with his labret. "My chin was really easy to do. And the tongue is the fastest healing part of the body. I bet it wouldn't hurt too badly."

"And why do you want one?" Sephiroth asked with a smirk and drained the rest of his cup of soda.

"Because it's cute!" Cloud sat up straight in his seat, reminding Sephiroth of a sweet little otter sitting up to play.

"Stick out your tongue," He grinned. Cloud did, and Sephiroth sighed and shook the ice around in his cup. "It would look pretty cute. Don't go doin' it for me, though."

Cloud snapped his tongue back into his mouth and reared back indignantly. "Do I look like a sex freak to you?"

"Yes."

"Well I'm not, I want it for myself! Any benefit you'd get out of it would be purely coincidental…" Cloud leaned forward a little bit, and poked his tongue out again.

Sephiroth put his cup down. "Let's do it."

And so Cloud led Sephiroth under the flickering streetlights of the slums towards Cherry's Tattoos and Scarification. Although it was a mild spring day on the upper plate, the shaded air below carried a sharp chill. By the time they found the tattoo parlor, Cloud was covered in nervous goose bumps. Sephiroth curled an arm around him and pulled him inside.

Heavy metal roared when the door was opened, and enclosed them in a tight case of noise as it came falling shut. The shop looked the same as before, except this time there were several patrons. They were all large, masculine bikers and crowded around one who was lying facedown on a metal table. Cherry herself sat straddled on his back, buzzing ink needle in hand.

Cloud stood up on tiptoes to peek at what the gentleman was getting inked, but Cherry abruptly stopped working on him to turn to them.

"I'll be just a minute, look around!" she called, and then the music in the air was once again accompanied by the buzzing of the needle.

Cloud grinned and pointed to a photograph of a large, elaborate sword tattoo. "Wouldn't it be cool to get something like that?"

"I see you more with somethin' like this," Sephiroth said into his ear, and pointed to a photo of a musical note adorned tramp stamp.

Cloud was about to tell his boyfriend that he was not a tramp, and therefore no stamp was necessary, but there was very suddenly a woman between the two of them. Cherry had completely abandoned her customer to ogle the General. "I'm so sorry! I didn't realize who you were when you came in! Holy crap! You're the guy!"

Sephiroth had suffered less intelligent greetings. "General Sephiroth. Pleased."

Cloud could immediately feel his lover's essence become drier and less volumous. It was like seeing someone with manageable, shiny hair suddenly move to an arid climate. Sephiroth became mildly professional, but not completely militant.

Cherry was tremendously affected by him, suddenly nowhere near the cool, collected lady he remembered guiding him through his labret adventure but rather a giddy, starstruck young thing.

Her burly customer on the tattoo table sat up, "Yo is this shit done?"

His companions weren't much help in deciphering if the tattoo was complete, and staggered to surround him closely, all bumping together like bowling pins.

"Yeah, you're all set. Get out!" Cherry waved to them, turning back to Sephiroth with a girlish smile.

"You're supposed to kiss me!" The biker slurred loudly. "Where's my approval seal?"

"I already told you! I don't do that anymore!" She yelled and the man skulked out with his posse in tow. They would have probably started trouble if General Sephiroth hadn't been standing there in the flesh. When they were gone, she confided, "I definitely still do that, just not for that guy. So, what brings you in here this evening?"

Sephiroth tenderly rubbed the back of Cloud's neck. "My boyfriend's decided he wants to get his tongue pierced."

Cherry seemed slightly disappointed – but only very slightly. She appraised Cloud, tilting her head when she noticed his labret. "Did you get that here?"

Cloud nodded with a smile. "Yeah, almost six months ago."

"And you've still got it? Very nice!" She took Cloud's hand and led him to the exact same chair he'd gotten pierced in before.

"How badly does the tongue hurt?" He asked, his fingers twining in excited jitters as he took a seat.

"Not as badly as the labret, and that wasn't bad at all, right?" She pulled open a drawer to retrieve a stack of documents. "Sorority chicks come in here in flocks and they all get tongue piercings together. If they can do it, you can do it!"

"I guess I can do it!" Cloud squeaked.

"You can do it," Sephiroth encouraged.

"I'm gonna do it!" Cloud declared. "What's going to happen to me?"

"It'll be swollen for the rest of today. After this you might as well go home and watch a movie or something, and try not to talk too much. Liquids only until tomorrow night, hopefully you ate a good meal before you came here."

Apparently, aftercare for a tongue piercing fit perfectly well into their plans of laziness and gluttony, but Cloud then turned up his eyebrows. "What about kissing…?"

"Go easy. No tongue kissing, anyways," She clarified, handing Cloud a clipboard.

"Don't worry baby," Sephiroth assured. With a Cure, he was confident that Cloud's tongue would be open for business immediately.

Cloud took a deep breath and began to fill out the necessary paperwork. Once he was finished, Cherry forced him to not only wear a blue baby bib, but to swill mouthwash for a full minute. Sephiroth laughed at the sounds of anguish Cloud made as he kept the burning liquid in his mouth. By the time he was done swishing, Cherry was done prepping her instruments.

"Lemme see your tongue," She instructed.

Cloud carefully unrolled it from his mouth, his eyes already clamped shut in terror. Sephiroth laughed again – he looked like the reluctant recipient of a low budget cum shot.

She took his tongue between her fingers, and put a single drop of blue food coloring on the center. She then held a mirror in front of Cloud's face, "That's where it's going, for better or worse. Look good?"

Cloud gave her a shaky thumbs up. She then took a scissor-like clamp and positioned the hole over the blue dot. Then she snapped her head in Sephiroth's direction, "Hey, what the hell is your boyfriend doing!?"

Surprised, Cloud glanced over at Sephiroth, who was only standing there watching with interest. Suddenly, his vision clouded with tears as a sharp, uncontrollable pain seared through his tongue. He never even got to see the needle coming!

He squeaked only slightly when the piercing needle was pushed through completely and the barbell was screwed in on the underside.

"He didn't even bleed," Sephiroth remarked.

"I'm just that good," She smirked, and then announced, "You're done."

The entire piercing process took less than a minute. Cloud's tongue throbbed, but the pain wasn't as important as slaying another piercing! Before he could think to ask, the mirror was placing back in front of him.

"What do you think?"

He popped his tongue out, amazed to see something actually sticking through it all the way to the other side. He morbidly flipped it up to look at the underside to make sure it was really true. He gave a little cheer, and Sephiroth and Cherry both joined in.

"Now, before it swells up too much – " was all she said before leaning forward and kissing Cloud, sending a zippy shock of pain through his whole body when she sucked his tongue into a kiss of approval.

Cloud felt a monumental blush that crept all the way down to his shoulders. He looked at Sephiroth sheepishly, but he was grinning with both eyebrows raised. Cloud had told him all about getting kissed after his labret, and about the fucking Prince Alberts. There was no telling how much strange cock residue he'd just ingested!

She stood up and snapped her gloves off. "Will you make this the best day ever and get a tongue piercing too, General?"

Sephiroth snorted. "Not interested in that."

"You thould get thomthing!" Cloud suggested with his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he admired his new hardware in the mirror. He reeled it back into his mouth. "Maybe something a bit more discreet… like your…well, just something more discreet in the pectoral area…"

"I think your honey bunny wants you to get your nipples done, Sir," Cherry supplied, not discreet in the slightest.

"Yeah," Cloud blushed slightly and nodded, "I just don't like saying the word …'nipple'."

Both Cherry and Sephiroth burst into laughter at the pronunciation, which was the exact reason why Cloud didn't like to say it. It sounded like 'nip – puww'.

After getting over his little lover's way of speaking, Sephiroth's face tightened with consideration. "I don't think I'd have a huge problem with that, but I'd just rather not have something hanging off of me that could rip off other parts of me. Especially my fuckin' nipples, shit."

Cloud giggled, envisioning the wrath Sephiroth would suffer in the pain simulator in the training floor. "Well, what about your belly button? It's protected by your belt!"

"Yeah, what about your belly button!?" Cherry egged.

Sephiroth's face fell. "Yeah right. That's for chicks."

They all hummed in thought. Sephiroth spoke after a moment, "Would I have to have an appointment to get tattooed?"

Cloud shrieked in air before bellowing, "What!?"

Cherry shook her head. "Appointments are for suckers. If you want something we should do it now."

Sephiroth requested a piece of paper. Cloud and Cherry crowded around him as he wrote something with sharp, short flicks of his fingers. It wasn't anything Cloud could recognize, it looked almost as though Sephiroth had created ornate holes in the paper with the cadence of an actual written language.

It scared Cloud somewhat. "…What does that mean?"

"Secret."

"Does it mean 'secret', or are you just not going to tell me what it means?"

"Not telling," Sephiroth clarified. Cherry seemed satisfied with the chance to touch upon the legendary man, and couldn't have cared less what he was actually getting inked onto himself. She went to create a hasty stencil of the mysterious word.

Cloud leaned against him when she was gone. "Won't you tell me?"

"Because if I tell you what it means, it loses meaning. Make sense?"

Cloud beamed up at him. "It's my name, isn't it?!"

"No," Sephiroth rolled eyes. "It's more like my own name, ya little brat."

"Sephiroth is a pretty name in any language," Cloud smiled, leaning onto his shoulder while clicking his new piercing against his teeth. He was delighted with the thought that he could still bang something while both hands were busy.

The word Sephiroth had chosen was a short phrase that Jenova sometimes referred to him as. It translated into 'my own', but the act of getting it imprinted onto himself made the meaning quite different. Especially with a slightly flared outer edge of the written symbol, which sharpened the meaning with possessiveness.

It was a claim on his own body, which was nobody else's but his. Not Jenova's, not Shin-Ra's, and not even Cloud's. He could think of nothing else he'd want to get imprinted on his skin than a declaration of independence.

Besides maybe a cool 666 logo from 'The Omen'. Or the SOLDIER emblem. Or strategically placed stars. Or his sword, on fire or something. Or Cloud's lip print on his ass. He smiled as the art on the walls gave him more and more body art inspiration, most of which was juvenile, stupid, and inherently male.

But Sephiroth's body was his own. He could do whatever he wanted to it.

The tattoo artist reappeared, and toted a large toolbox. "I have to use my heavy duty stuff for you SOLDIER types."

She showed Sephiroth the stencil she'd created, and he approved. She asked him where he'd like it, and to her and Cloud's momentarily bewilderment, he reached over his head and pulled his shirt off.

"How about here?" He suggested, and rubbed his hand over his rib with a questioning look.

They were both stricken speechless at the sight of the shirtless General. Cherry because she'd never seen such male perfection up close, and Cloud because the spot Sephiroth had selected for his tattoo simply enhanced the entire tight, chiseled situation.

After a moment, Cherry regained some semblance of professionalism. "That's a … really nice spot."

Cloud nodded with a dry swallow. "Good placement."

The General took his own turn filling out legal paperwork. Cherry snapped on a new pair of gloves and began to unload and clean her equipment. The heavy-duty needle was indeed heavy duty. She explained to Cloud that it was necessary since SOLDIER skin attempted to heal itself a bit too rapidly for smooth lines to be created, so she used a super fast, super large needle to get the job done quickly.

Once he was done signing his life away, Sephiroth lied down on the metal table. He snorted as the tattoo artist straddled his legs. "You really gonna sit on me like that?"

"You bet," was all she said. Sephiroth decided that since he himself didn't like being questioned when he was in his own element, he wouldn't try and tell the lady how to do her job. If it included sitting on his legs until they were numb, it was worth putting up with for the sake of a good tattoo.

She placed Sephiroth's arms in a position that wouldn't force his ribs to stick out too far, then sanitized the location before pressing on the stencil. Sephiroth looked in a handheld mirror, liked what he saw and gave his final consent.

The ink he had chosen was pale gray, a slightly darker shade than his hair. She diluted black ink into water until it was the right color, and then began.

Cloud carefully watched Sephiroth's face when the buzzing needle first touched his skin. He was perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling like a beautiful statue in recline. Only when the needle began to move did he blink.

"Does it hurt really bad?" Cloud asked eagerly, taking a look at the work being done. It wasn't gruesome, but Cherry did seem to be taking her time. "What's it feel like?"

"Opposite of a blowjob," Sephiroth managed to say.

Cherry picked the needle off of his skin to wipe away excess ink. "That's one way to put it."

"C'mon, really. How bad is it hurting right now?" Cloud pressed.

"…It's a vibratin' needle bein' stuck into my rib bone. Repeatedly," Sephiroth took a little breath when she stopped tattooing to apply a dab of Vaseline. He felt like he should have been used to this sort of thing growing up as a lab experiment, but still… "It kinda sucks."

Cloud moved closer and kissed him. To his surprise the kiss was received in full and returned. Apparently, Sephiroth liked a little bit of coddling and comforting while he was in pain, and it was good to know. When their lips slowly parted, Cloud nuzzled his nose and murmured. "Wanna hear a story?"

Sephiroth nodded. "Why not."

Cloud picked up a tabloid that had been resting on a neighboring chair and began to narrate the lives of people they didn't know and didn't particularly care about. But for the moment, they ooh'd and aah'd over the on again off again relationships, public disses and scandals, and photos of celebrities without makeup and sporting double chins due to bad angles.

Before Cloud was halfway through the magazine, Cherry announced that Sephiroth's tattoo was complete. This was good, because his tongue had begun to feel heavy in his mouth and he was sick of talking. He threw the magazine aside and clamored up to his feet to get a look at the ink.

Sephiroth raised himself up onto his elbows to look down at himself. Before Cloud's eyes, the redness and slightly raised swelling of the area was already fading. What was left behind was a ghostly gray imprint of Jenovian writing.

"Hot!" Cloud declared.

Cherry was already priming her lips with pink lipstick. "I'm sure you know the drill by now," And with that, she gave her handiwork a big, fat smooch.

They both left the tattoo parlor in pain and covered in pink lipstick. Despite his healing abilities, Sephiroth's ribs smarted beneath the bandage as he walked. And despite a Cure, Cloud's tongue was still swollen and throbbing. Apparently nothing could help them escape the discomfort of body art aftermath.

And yet, as they walked together through the polluted streets of lower level Midgar, they spoke of what body part or piece of skin they could customize next.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

It was only a ten-minute stroll to Rhonda and Julie's apartment. Fifteen tops if traffic was unlucky. A five minute run if there was an emergency. And yet after a solid hour of pedestrian travel, Sephiroth and Cloud were barely halfway there.

Cloud had decided to purchase a newspaper so he could see what was going on around town that weekend, and thus plan accordingly. While he flipped through his paper, Sephiroth held an arm around his shoulders and tried valiantly to steer him away from danger.

The sidewalk was full of hazards such as yippy dogs, fire hydrants, and fellow pedestrians. But with the combination of his nose in the paper and clumsy feet, Cloud got tangled in the yippy dogs' leashes, would stub right into the fire hydrants, and bumped and walked into several people with little to no apology.

It was so much fun to have chaotic Cloud back by his side that Sephiroth was nothing but a being of adoring patience.

It was a balmy, bright and sunny day on the top plate. Sephiroth loved heat. He liked hot weather, sweat on his skin, and the looseness of his joints. Not to mention that Cloud was skimpily dressed for the weather in tight little jeans that had been cut off at the knees and a thin t-shirt.

He himself wasn't a shorts kind of guy by any means. He was more than willing to bear the heat in a pair of black jeans and a gray t-shirt.

Cloud was rattling off activities that they may or may not attend over their vacation, "There's a lot of good stuff going on! There's a rave somewhere in sector 7, the location's a secret but I bet I can find out. And there's a dog show! Oh Seph, haven't you ever wanted to go to one? And there's a carnival to raise money for this orphanage. And there's a chili tasting thing…"

Suddenly Cloud stopped talking in mid sentence and halted so abruptly that Sephiroth almost tripped over him. Almost as though he was in a trance, Cloud turned and gazed into a designer bakery's window.

There were three huge cakes on display, the center a three foot high, multi-tiered wedding cake that was lavishly decorated with ribbons, artistic puffs of icing and dyed fruit. Cloud's eyes widened and blinked slowly at it.

"Want it..?" Sephiroth asked with a flirtatious suggestion, if for no other reason to see Cloud giggle and blush.

But Cloud didn't giggle or blush, he solemnly nodded his head. "At least once in my life I want a cake just like that. And I just want to get naked and smash my entire fucking face into it."

Sephiroth could only laugh. Cloud sometimes took him completely off guard.

After Sephiroth told Cloud that he would rather drop dead than sit at a dog show, go to a carnival or eat mysterious chili, the newspaper was discarded. They'd be staying in and fucking that weekend, who were they trying to kid?

But even without the newspaper there were still plenty of other distractions on the way, such as a pack of unmistakable trannies, a spooky antique shop window full of ominous dolls, and a port-o-potty that Cloud swore two people were having relations in.

He stopped and pressed his ear to the side to listen to the moaning. Sephiroth pulled his arm. "What if the poor dude is just squeezin' off a giant turd? Let him do his business."

"No! I just heard a lady… listen…" Cloud whispered, then giggled. "I wonder if she's a Honeybee."

"Aren't they supposed to be hot?" Sephiroth wondered, becoming curious himself when he heard a distinctly female whimper.

Cloud nodded. "Yeah, Honeybees are way hot!"

"I wonder if the dude is hot, too?"

"No, he sounds old."

An impatient voice came from within. "You can come in and find out for ten gil. Otherwise, fuck off!"

Cloud shrieked in terror and ran several yards, stopping a safe distance away and waiting for Sephiroth to catch up, which took him a while due to a roaring case of the chuckles.

When they finally arrived on Rhonda's stoop, Sephiroth had a strong urge to turn around run back home – which surely would take less than half the time it had taken them to get there. For his short vacation, Sephiroth just wanted to be a creature of gluttony. He wanted to take off his clothes, eat like a pig, sleep all afternoon and make love when he woke up. Then repeat until it was time to settle back into normalcy.

He glanced down at Cloud, who looked up at him like he might have been thinking the same thing. His pretty mouth became a line. "When you don't feel like being here anymore, give me a sign. I'll say that I'm not feeling well. I'll cry or something."

Sephiroth blew out some air. "We used that one at the banquet. And it's too obvious, anyways."

"We'll have fun," Cloud decided. "I can feel it."

"I'd have more fun feeling you."

"Anytime you want!" Cloud flirted.

"We could always duck into the port-o-potty," Sephiroth smiled.

"Are you faggots ever coming in?" Rhonda shouted, throwing the door open on the two of them.

She and Sephiroth grinned at each other for a moment before coming together in a warm embrace. He picked her up and she hugged his neck and Cloud felt a very tiny, involuntary pang of jealousy spike through his mind.

It vanished when Julie's hand popped through the doorway and pulled him inside. He blushed a little as she hugged him like an old friend. He leaned back to smile at her, "How do you feel?"

Julie let her head drop on his shoulder weakly, "Exhausted. But thanking God that I'm thin again."

Cloud put his hands on her waist, and saw it to be true. She probably had a little baby puffiness to lose, but she was extremely svelte compared to the round, water heavy frame he'd last seen her with.

Sephiroth took a turn to hug the happy mother as well before Rhonda steered them all down a long central hallway to a room that was filled with Turks, SOLDIERs, and army. Most of them were dressed casually, and if they were unfortunate enough to have had to report for duty that day, pieces of their uniforms were left hanging open or shoved up to the elbows.

Cloud recognized a few faces; Max was in attendance as well as a few school instructors. He spotted Angeal twisting open a beer bottle with his inner elbow. He was somewhat hoping that he could see the guys from his original SOLDIER squad, but he didn't spot any.

It was easy to find Zack, Aerith, Genesis, and Rufus. They were seated with three very young Turks that Cloud wasn't familiar with and chatting quietly – which was extremely uncharacteristic for them.

It was then that Cloud realized Genesis was cradling a little soft blue bundle, and one of the other Turks had another. He grinned, hardly able to keep a happy coo inside his throat.

While he and Rhonda hadn't exactly become friends, he did ask her from time to time how Julie was coming along. Often he'd gasp a question out as he passed her while running, only to be answered with her bullhorn when he doubled back. They'd had a few disjointed conversations in this manner, and he considered the butchy gal to be a positive acquaintance.

When Cloud had left for the Crater, Julie was already late to deliver. The babies had made themselves very comfortable on her vital organs and really enjoyed causing her to become so bloated she couldn't fit her feet into any size shoe.

But now it was over, and it seemed to any and all that it had been worth it.

Cloud whispered soft greetings and wiggled his butt into the tiny space between Rufus and Genesis, and gently tugged back the blanket to get a peek at the babies' features. Rufus made a shallow noise of protest, but Genesis happily adjusted himself on the seat to share the sight of the new little person with Cloud.

The baby was a bald, pink skinned little wrinkled newborn, so ugly it was adorable. Cloud cooed again and Genesis silently shifted to hand the baby over to him.

"No!" Julie cried suddenly.

Cloud froze and turned up his eyebrows. "…I washed my hands recently."

"It's not that… do you know how to hold a baby?" she fretted, seeming anxious.

Cloud nodded. "Sure. But if you don't want me to, I won't."

Julie was clearly suffering from a severe to moderate case of the new mother jitters. She eyed the pierced blonde teenager wearily, expecting him to use her baby as some sort of projectile if the whim hit him.

But his large, water blue eyes finally convinced her that he was trustworthy. She still crossed her arms uneasily, though. "Gen, you can let Cloud hold him. Just… support his neck. No! Not like... okay, that's better..."

He accepted the baby into his arms, being strictly gentle and cautious. He weighed more than Cloud expected him to, and upon being passed to a different handler, the little boy wiggled a bit to get comfortable next to a different frame.

When seeing the great deal of care that the blonde teenager dealt her baby, Julie relaxed a little, but crouched on the floor in front of him.

"You're going to turn yourself gray prematurely, mommy," Rufus clucked and came closer, petting the baby's forehead with his fingertips in a rare show of tenderness.

Julie threw him a venomous glare. "Fuck – I mean… Fudge you."

Genesis and Rufus both cackled. Aerith began suggesting alternative swear words, such as 'sugar' in place of shit, or 'cheese and rice' in place of any number of more vulgar statements. Zack took it upon himself to let the world know that Aerith didn't shout out 'cheese and rice' while they were intimate. Aerith then told Zack that they would no longer be getting intimate.

Rhonda frowned. "It's going to be tough, but we just don't want any swearing around the kids."

"My mom cursed all the time around me. It was no big deal for us," Cloud pointed out. "No harm done! I'm normal."

The whole room glanced at him uneasily.

"What are their names?" Cloud whispered.

"Oh. Johnny and Matt," Julie murmured. "This is Matt."

Cloud looked over at the identical baby that Aerith was currently doting over. "They look just alike. How can you tell the difference?"

Julie shrugged. "Just can. And Matty has a little birthmark on his tush, so that helps."

Cloud giggled, and then looked up suddenly, realizing Sephiroth wasn't commenting at all on the newborns, or 'cheese and rice' for that fucking matter. It was then that he realized that his lover wasn't even in the room.

Sephiroth had stopped in the hallway to admire baby pictures of the people he worked with. They lined the long corridor in Julie and Rhonda's flat, taped to the wall in a long row; underneath each was the person's name on a pink or blue note card.

He easily recognized Rhonda and Julie, Rhonda especially because she seemed to possess the exact same face, just on a chubbier scale – and Julie only because she was hanging on the wall next to Rhonda. He found Zack, his dark hair sticking up straight and a bright, tiny toothed smile on his face.

Sephiroth grinned widely at a picture of Genesis and Angeal together at an extremely young age, both filthy as pigs in shit and happy to be that way – not much had changed in that arena. He found Elena, blonde since birth. He found Rufus, surrounded by elegance and apparently bored to death with life at the tender age of two.

Sephiroth found all sorts of assorted people that decorated his life. When he came across an empty spot in the row of pictures, he pulled up the scotch tape and a blue name card from the hallway table.

With a soft smile he pulled out the picture of Cloud that April had sent him for Christmas. Rhonda had told him on the phone to bring baby pictures of themselves for the occasion, and even though he'd been only half-listening and lust crazed at the time, he still remembered Cloud's picture. He wrote Cloud's name on the slip of paper and taped both up neatly. He let his fingers stroke the giddy, rounded face of his lover and kept moving.

He looked at every picture, all the way to the very last one. His eyes had glided right over it until he realized what he was looking at. Moving in closer, he was able to confirm that he was seeing a picture of himself as a young child.

Previously forgotten and unimportant memories flooded back. His baby-fine silver hair was trimmed above his ears. He was wearing a sweater, but it wasn't cold that day, and he had tried to fight against it. He wore tiny cargo shorts – innumerable pockets to hide snacks in.

One time he forgot about half of a candy bar in one of those pockets, and then found it later. That tiny candy bar had gotten him through a terrible night. Sephiroth couldn't remember what had happened that was so terrible, just the candy bar and how it made everything better.

In the photo on the wall form this early era of his life, Sephiroth was standing on top of a yellow slide with his arms raised in triumph. In his memories the slide seemed bigger than any mountain. He crawled and shimmied up the shiny surface, huffing and puffing as he reached the summit. He felt like he had slain ten thousand monsters all at once. He felt exalted, he felt like a hero, he cried out in victory and there was only one person there to hear it.

"Smile, buddy!" Vincent had called up to him.

Vincent took the picture. Vincent had a lot of pictures of his adolescence. Sephiroth had never seen any of them, nor had ever expected to see them.

He assumed they were gone. But if the picture was there…so was Vincent.

It took a great deal of effort to push off of the wall, but Sephiroth did with an anxious swallow. The entrance to the kitchen was right next to his picture, and there was movement stirring from within. Letting his hand trail the wall, he poked his head inside.

"Hey cutie! What are you sneaking around for? Get in here if you're hungry," It was just Elena sitting at the table, chopping up cheese onto a party tray. Sephiroth released a heavy sigh of both relief and sorrow, and shuffled his feet inside.

Elena was at the table. But there was also a dark haired, red-eyed man perched on the countertop nearby. Sephiroth's emotions turned in a dizzy circle; he wanted to do an about face at the same time as stopping dead in his tracks and at the same time of playing it cool. It all translated into a gracefully recovered stumble as he made his way to a chair.

"How you been?" Sephiroth smiled, and hugged her neck. He placed a kiss on top of her sleek hair, and his eyes flicked to Vincent quickly.

She chattered away for a few moments about her personal goings on that he had missed out on being away. Sephiroth filled in the blanks with appropriate responses, not uncaring about what she was saying, but unable to focus. Elena was his good friend, but ignorant to the personal history he had with Vincent, her boss.

His eyes burned with the urge to not look at Vincent, and he waited to be acknowledged by his not-father. From his peripheral, he remained still on the counter, sometimes commenting on Elena's rambling with his own canned, automated responses.

"I'm gonna carry this stuff out," Elena declared, picking up a tray of fruit. "You two make yourselves useful and get the rest."

She left.

Sephiroth slowly rose from the table and picked up one of the trays left behind. He finally looked at Vincent, who was looking back. After a short internal battle, he gave the Turk a slow nod.

Vincent was holding a bottle of beer, and he rolled it between his palms. "Hey."

"…Hey."

"How's it been?" Vincent asked, almost as though he were verbally shrugging at him.

"Been good," Sephiroth said blandly, soured by the indifference. He exhaled shortly, and took a step to the door.

But there were a thousand things he needed to know.

He wanted to demand to know why the man had teased him with the notion of a family only to pull it away when it could have actually become real. He wanted to know why the man felt the need to enter his life in the first place. He wanted to know if the man cared about him at all. He wanted to scream and cry and tear the entire kitchen apart.

All he could do was wait. But he wouldn't wait for long.

He counted to ten, giving Vincent ten chances that he didn't deserve.

Ten chances to open his mouth and say something worthwhile.

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CHAPTER IMAGE!

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665 REVIEWS GIFT! http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/BA-665-Reviews-THANK-YOU-151273584

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A/N

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1 – They say a mind is a terrible thing to waste. The main reason why I haven't updated in forever is because I got a new job. When I began this story, I had a job that allowed me ample time to think. All day at work, I would be thinking about this story and writing notes to myself. Now, I have a job where my brain is frenzily occupied 8 hours a day. When I get home, my brain is tired and wants to do nothing – but surprise, there's been piles of schoolwork to be done. So it's not a lack of mojo, or inspiration, or passion for this story, it's a lack of mental and physical energy to sit down and write. So even if some may be turned off by the amount of time that's elapsed between this chapter and the previous one, I'm going to do my best to update regularly from now on. This chapter was just especially hard to get out, due to the new (well, not so new anymore) job, and school. I miss this story though, I miss the boys, and I miss the fun I used to have thinking about them and writing down the things they tell me.

2 – So I'm making a commitment to update this story in three weeks, and at least every three weeks thereafter. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and I miss having mine to play with.  
3 – The reviews I get for this story are heartbreaking and wonderful. I might not always know how to respond, but I read every single one of them and am touched by them all. Thank you so much for encouraging me to keep going. I'm so happy to have people to share this with, I hope I continue to entertain you because that's the only reason I do it. I'm so grateful for the interesting, diverse, and amazing people who I've gotten to know just because they enjoy this story.


	23. Kids

Cloud glanced up when he saw someone enter the room, and his jaw dropped when he realized it was mother fucking Vincent Valentine.

Vincent was wearing the same cut of suit that Cloud had seen him in before, minus a tie. His alarmingly red eyes scanned the room and gave Cloud the barest of glances before he came forward and set down three trays of finger food that he was balancing. Once they were placed on the table, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and began to pack it as he turned to leave again.

Cloud was both grateful and disappointed that the intimidating man was leaving as quickly as he arrived, until Julie decided to squawk at him, "Vinny! You haven't said hello to the boys, yet!"

Vincent stopped and slowly turned. He reluctantly slid his cigarettes back into his pocket and approached Cloud, or rather the infant he was currently holding.

Cloud looked up at him like a tiny mouse regarding an airborne predator.

Julie wasn't nearly as impressed, and tugged on the end of Vincent's sleeve and scooted over, making room for him to kneel down on the floor in front of Cloud. Vincent gave the unamused sigh of a far older person than he appeared to be, and pulled up his pants a bit as he knelt.

Cloud could have shat a brick. An older version of Sephiroth's beautiful face brooded under dark hair, only lit up by a pair of piercing red eyes. He was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome; the boiling polar opposite of Sephiroth's icy features.

Vincent glanced up at Cloud, clearly noting his blatant staring problem. Then he wearily regarded the newborn baby. "It looks like a hairless rat."

Julie elbowed him. "We all know that. But you still have to tell me he's cute."

"He's very cute, Jules," Vincent finally admitted, and raised a hand to touch the baby's small face.

"Do you want to hold him?" Cloud offered quietly.

The Turk seemed to hesitate, but then Julie elbowed him. "Sure he does."

Vincent sighed again and rose up higher on his knees to take the baby from Cloud. Their arms and hands mingled as Cloud was slightly caught up in the baby's blanket, but after some careful fumbling the infant was successfully transferred.

Confident with the child's new handler, Julie excused herself to nosh on the food trays Vincent had brought in. He remained on his knees before Cloud, and an awkward silence settled between the two.

Cloud finally spoke. "My name's Cloud."

Vincent clicked his teeth, not looking away from the newborn. "…Vincent Valentine."

"Nice to meet you," Cloud continued despite the lukewarm greeting.

"Pleasure's mine," Vincent replied absently.

Cloud fought the blush that crept onto his face at the word 'pleasure' coming from Vincent's mouth, his deep, even voice so much like his son's. He wondered if those two identical voices had shared words, and decided to pry. "Did you get a chance to see Sephiroth?"

"Yeah. I saw him," Vincent answered somewhat sweetly, as if he was talking to the baby as it shifted grumpily in his arms. He said nothing else for long enough for Cloud to feel uncomfortable again, before Vincent finally looked up at him. "…You and Seph are together?"

Cloud felt his face grow hot. Talk traveled, but he didn't know how Sephiroth felt about Vincent in particular knowing he was gay. But Cloud wasn't going to lie to a Turk, let alone a Turk that was Sephiroth's father, and so he answered as confidently as he could, "Yes, sir."

Vincent frowned as though this concept was unusual, "Like… boyfriends or somethin'?"

"Yes sir, for the past five months," Cloud told him.

"Oh," Vincent gave a non-committal nod of his head. He then returned his gaze back to the baby in his arms.

"He's been gone for a lot of it," Cloud spoke to fill the void. "But we've managed to keep close by talking and texting. Seems like that's the way it has to be to keep in touch with most people in Shin-Ra. You're all busy people."

Vincent hummed in agreement. "…You tryin' out for SOLDIER or Turk?"

"SOLDIER!" Cloud straightened happily in his chair to say so.

Vincent nodded. "You'll do well. Seph's leadin' a good pack."

Cloud giggled, "Sephiroth inspired me to join in the first place. It's so funny... I never really thought I'd even get the chance to talk to him. I'd hoped of course, but I never really thought it'd happen. And now… I love him with all my heart."

Vincent smirked, shaking his head at the notion of Sephiroth and this babbly foreign blond cadet together. It was clear that the little kid had big feelings for Sephiroth, which was nice – all things considered.

He'd been appalled the day he'd happened upon them necking on the sidewalk under the plate. But actually hearing the depth of sincerity he had for Sephiroth, Vincent became somewhat content with the unorthodox happiness that they had found together. He supposed he'd always rather see Sephiroth settle with a nice girl… but in his pool of experience, nice girls were utterly fictional.

He supposed that if Sephiroth had found himself a nice boy… there were worse things. "Well, I guess that's real cute. Is he treatin' you right? I don't need to backhand him, do I?"

"Definitely not," Cloud laughed, feeling bubbly and surreal to be talking about this with the infamous Turk Commander. "We can both be bitchy to each other sometimes, though. Being apart a lot doesn't help things, but we're managing."

"Bein' involved with someone you barely see puts a test on things, doesn't it?" Vincent said to him. "I barely wanna talk to anybody on the phone, let alone some broad I'm tryin' to date. Not that you're a broad of course – "

"No, I know what you mean!" Cloud blushed, not allowing Vincent to apologize for something trivial. "But with me and Seph, it's like we never run out of things to say. I can't even recount what we've talked about afterwards, because we usually don't talk about anything at all. We just like to hear each other make noises, I suppose!"

Vincent didn't say anything at first, but hiked an eyebrow. Cloud slowly registered what he had just said and felt his face become scorching hot. "Well, words, I mean. The noises we make are words. Talking. We're talking while we're making noise on the phone…"

"Well, at any rate, it seems like you're keepin' him busy," Vincent finally said, decided to not torture the blushing boy with his calculating silence any longer. "How's he doin'?"

"Didn't you ask him yourself?" Cloud asked.

"Nah." Vincent shrugged, "He doesn't need me botherin' him."

Cloud tried to swallow that down without getting angry, but it was way too difficult to manage. He liked Vincent as a person, but that didn't mean he forgave him for hurting Sephiroth with his distance.

He'd heard pain in Sephiroth's voice, felt his lover's sadness and sense of incompletion from this severed tie. Vincent was the only family he had, and even then he hardly knew him. Cloud lowered his voice to keep his demanding tone out of the earshot of the party, "It's not 'bothering' him to talk to him. And if it is, then maybe he does need to be bothered."

"Well," Vincent said, seeming to try to gather something to say. "He's… He doesn't seem to…"

Suddenly Genesis approached, and his voice was like an atom bomb dropped onto their conversation. "Hey! It's been nearly half an hour and I want Matty back!"

Vincent was only too willing to pawn the baby off into Genesis' demanding arms. While they were busy transferring him, Cloud's pocket vibrated with a text. He pulled out his phone and saw that it was from Sephiroth, and that he had completely foregone punctuation.  
come here plz in the bathroom

gladly! Cloud typed back with a huge sigh of relief. Any excuse to get out of this awkward bubble of conversation would be welcome, and besides, he was planning on forcing father and son to reunite. Fucking the son in the bathroom first would definitely take the edge off.

"Well, I'm going to see where Seph went," Cloud said to Vincent when he was done handing the baby back to Genesis, and offered a handshake. Vincent looked at it before carefully encasing the smaller hand in his, then proceeded to shake it way, way too hard. Cloud's arm nearly snapped in half, and Vincent openly laughed at the face he made. He would never understand why people in Midgar did this to him, and perhaps someday he'd learn his lesson.

But despite yet another social transgression, it was comforting to see the sexy Turk finally crack a genuine smile.

…Sexy Turk? Cloud inwardly groaned at that thought and immediately turned away, but Vincent called to him.

"Hey. Bring Seph back with you, alright?"

"Definitely," Cloud nodded, and stepped into the hallway. He finally noticed the baby photos of the party attendees on the wall and was charmed by them, especially when he noticed that Sephiroth had put up the one that his mother had sent to him of his third birthday. That explained why Sephiroth didn't follow into the living room in the first place, but where was the bathroom?

hurry Sephiroth texted.

marco! Cloud quickly typed back. Then he listened carefully, and smiled when he heard the faint echo of one of Sephiroth's ring tones from down the hallway. There was a door with light cracked underneath it and Cloud figured it was a safe bet to knock gently.

The door unlocked from the other side and opened slightly, and Cloud peeked in, expecting to find Sephiroth waiting with his pants around his ankles. What he found though, was his lover's fair face tinted bright red. His eyes were puffy, and the whites were pink, making the greens pop out even more vibrantly than usual. Streaks of wetness dripped from Sephiroth's jaw line, until he self-consciously rubbed them away.

Cloud was shocked senseless, until he finally came to the realization that his lover was crying. "Seph!"

"Shh!" He pulled Cloud into the room by his elbow.

He slipped inside and stuck to Sephiroth like glue. "What's wrong?"

"Don't yell," Sephiroth hissed against his hair as he squeezed Cloud into a hug. "Just chill out with me for a second, 'kay?"

"Okay," Cloud agreed carefully and hugged him tightly. Cloud rubbed his hands up and down his back, and frowned at how small Sephiroth felt in that moment. "…Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything?"

"No," Sephiroth said ambiguously and pressed his wet face into Cloud's shoulder.

"Well are you saying you don't feel good or are you saying you don't need anything?" Cloud asked, mainly because he felt the need to talk and force Sephiroth to talk.

"I dunno," was all Sephiroth muttered back to him. "I just…"

Cloud was at a loss. "Talk to me."

"Vincent's here," Sephiroth finally managed to say.

Cloud's heart hardened at the possibility that something from their interaction might have hurt Sephiroth this badly. Vincent played it off like nothing had happened. Then again, he had no reason to tell Cloud the truth about anything. But if they'd fought, why did he ask Cloud to bring Sephiroth back with him?

Cloud considered playing dumb to get Sephiroth to tell the entire story, but decided the last thing Sephiroth needed was mind trickery. He admitted, "I know he's here. I talked to him in the living room."

Sephiroth stilled in his arms. "What?"

"Don't worry, we just talked for a second. I didn't say anything to embarrass you."

"You don't embarrass me, Cloud," Sephiroth murmured, pressing his face to Cloud's neck. "Not at all."

Cloud's face erupted into a smile, and although he was trying to be sympathetic and sullen, he couldn't help but warm over with joy at the fact that Sephiroth was so willing to be open about their love. When he was sure that he'd swallowed all of his bubbling giggles, Cloud asked, "Well what happened when you saw him?"

"It was in the kitchen."

"And?" Cloud pried, trying to pull away to look at his face. But Sephiroth seemed to be glued to the crook of his neck, so he settled for simply holding him tighter. "What did he say?"

"Nothin'." Sephiroth made a small, unidentifiable noise and shuddered.

Cloud never felt more helpless in his entire life, his stomach felt absolutely sick to see Sephiroth like this. And just whom did that trashy Turk Commander think he was to make his beloved General cry? Why was be busying himself smoking and schmoozing and holding stranger's babies when his own son was feeling neglected?

Cloud almost growled when felt more wetness drip down his neck and into his shirt. "He must have said something!"

With a deep snort, Sephiroth pulled away from Cloud and turned to the mirror. He took a wad of toilet paper and began to dry his face. "No, he didn't. He said 'hey', 'how you been', and that was it."

Cloud looked at his swollen green eyes in the mirror, "Well what did you say to him?"

"Nothin'," Sephiroth grumbled.

"Hrm… it's a start, isn't it? He's in the living room. You should come out and talk to him."

"No. He doesn't give a shit."

Cloud wrapped his arms around Sephiroth's waist. "You shouldn't let this yuckiness between you two sit any longer."

Sephiroth caught Cloud's eyes in the mirror and held them. "You didn't talk to your dad on Christmas. Why?"

Cloud's eyes in the mirror flicked away. "… It's too late for me and my dad."

"That's such a cop out," Sephiroth huffed. "You're six-fuckin'-teen. I don't think it's too late for you to do anything. You oughta call him."

"But twenty-two is way too ancient to repair your own bullshit?" Cloud challenged, but squeezed his lover's waist tighter. "I'm on your side, but maybe you should have said more to him. Plenty has happened in your life since he was in the loop. Maybe he feels like he can't ask about anything because then he'd have to ask about everything. There's no easy way to have a casual conversation with someone after so much time has passed, you have to work at it."

"How can I make these bags go away?" Sephiroth evaded, wiping at the puffiness around his eyes.

"Stop rubbing!" Cloud took a small guest towel that was laid on the counter and soaked it with cool water before pressing it over Sephiroth's eyes.

He sat down on the toilet lid and held the rag against his face. "I guess I coulda said more. I just think he oughta start. He fuckin' owes me."

"You'll wait forever, then," Cloud predicted. "He seems just as stubborn as you are."

Sephiroth peeked out from his rag, "You know, I get tired of everyone tellin' me I'm stubborn all the time. I'm not really tha – "

Cloud kept talking. "Oh yes you are Seph, you're not easy to talk to sometimes. Especially if you're in work mode, which is where you always see him. Maybe he thinks it's too late. He probably feels like he'd be bothering you."

"Right," Sephiroth dismissed sarcastically from under the rag. "I don't really need or appreciate your observational commentary. This isn't my fault. And how would you even know anythin' about it, anyways?"

"Then why, pray tell, did you ask me to come in here?" Cloud queried, his voice taking on the light, airy tone of pre-rage.

Sephiroth immediately felt guilty for taking his anger out on Cloud, who was really only trying to help. He slowly peered out from under the rag and found Cloud was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring down at him with blue fire dancing in his eyes.

"…I didn't mean that," Sephiroth said slowly, his eyebrows turning up slightly. "I'm pissed off, but not at you, babe."

Cloud weighed the apology, and quickly decided that angry words weren't worth being upset over. He reached out to stroke Sephiroth's hair. "You're lucky you're so sexy."

"Come here," Sephiroth demanded, leaning back against the toilet and stretching out his legs as a seat offering. Cloud accepted and sat on his lap, then took over holding the cool rag against his lover's swollen eyes. With hands freed, Sephiroth used both to wrap around Cloud's waist.

"I feel better already," Sephiroth smiled, and Cloud kissed him beneath the edge of the rag.

"Tell me everything that happened between you and Vincent. I mean really," Cloud said when their lips came apart.

"I already toldja. On the day I graduated school, he told me point blank that he wasn't my dad, and he drove away. We never talked after that," Sephiroth said blandly. In his mind's eye, his teenage self coughed on the road dust kicked up by Vincent's Caddy.

"That's exactly what you told me last time. There has to be more, so spill," Cloud said. "I might understand everything better if you tell me all about what happened. You've got a minute before the puffiness will go away, anyways. Gimme the rag."

Sephiroth uneasily handed Cloud the cloth and let him get up to run it under cold water again. He wrung it out before returning to Sephiroth's lap and putting it back over his swollen eyes. "Talk."

"Fine," Sephiroth gave a lengthy, bored sigh. Cloud smiled slightly to realize it sounded just like one of Vincent's lengthy, bored sighs.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The day that Sephiroth graduated from the Shin-Ra Military Academy wasn't the most exciting day of his life by a longshot. The entire school year prior he'd been training as a Junior SOLDIER, and reinventing everything that was expected of such a young member of the army. It was a life of nonstop action compared to his boring, sterile childhood.

He'd always had a bossy streak and found it easy to command his peers. He was nobody, but something about Sephiroth's demeanor made them want to obey his orders. Even his higher ranking squad leaders seemed to like having his approval, and it was a trait that didn't go unnoticed by the army superiors.

Sephiroth was intimidating, persuasive, handsome and above all, smart. His way of speaking hid his tactical brilliance at first, but throughout the year Sephiroth learned to smother his Midgar drawl. It was no surprise that he was selected for immediate promotion to a Second Class Sergeant – unheard of for a boy of sixteen and three quarters.

He'd always been eager in school, and so much younger than everyone else in his grade. He wasn't exactly short, but his body still held the lankiness of youth. His eyes were still a big too large for his face, his teeth a little too sharp for his mouth, and his arms a little too long for his body. He had another couple of growth spurts coming to him, but in the meantime he still looked noticeably out of place in a Junior SOLDIER lineup.

He knew he was born to lead in the army, but it didn't cheapen the thrill of success. Whether he was made to be the perfect SOLDIER or if he had earned it himself, he felt proud of himself. He knew the army was where he belonged. When he got the news about his immediate promotion a few days before graduation, he wasn't shy at all about letting his friends and enemies alike know that he was going to be commanding them.

After graduation, he would be a man. And to go hand in hand with his new professional freedom, he planned to get his ass out of the lab.

There was no way in hell that he would be coming home to the labs as a fully-fledged SOLDIER. How was he supposed command squads on a tour of Wutai, then come back to a place where he had to ask permission to use the telephone? How was he supposed to sleep in the same tiny shoebox bedroom full of cameras? Not to mention the showers at the labs… the Academy had been his showering safe haven, there was no way he could jerk off at the labs knowing they were watching. Not just watching, but monitoring and taking notes.

Freedom was a necessity, but money was key. The labs had been funneling his cadet paychecks since the very beginning of his military school career.

It was all taken for the costs and upkeep of the S Project. Hojo had kept a tab on Sephiroth's head since the day he was born, and handed it to him instead of his first cadet check.

The list included baby formula, bottles, diapers, clothes, bedding, shoes, underwear, babyfood, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, his crib, his first big-boy bed, his current bed, medical fees not associated with the funded project (band aids for cuts were included), and an extensive list of the damages Sephiroth had created throughout his life – ruined projects because he'd played with them, walls and equipment he'd destroyed during mako tantrums. At the end of the list, there were also the salaries of his round-the-clock nurses, caretakers and child psychologists to be considered.

All in all, Sephiroth owed the medical labs roughly a million gil.

"This is bullshit!" Sephiroth had crowed. "You're makin' me pay for diapers? Where tha fuck else was I supposed to shit and piss?"

"Ugh, Sephiroth," one of the doctors touched his forehead where a vein bulged. "Please edit yourself before you speak."

"And the nannies?" Sephiroth continued anyways. "So when I was a baby, I guess I was supposed to find my own place to shit and wipe my own ass! This is bogus. I ain't payin'. I'll fuckin' kill myself first!"

Dr. Hojo spoke up, "Of course we do not expect you to pay it all back, Sephiroth. I just thought it would be fitting to show you how much you actually owe to this lab for your upbringing. You're still a minor, and you're still under my care, so any money you bring in now should go towards your present upkeep. You grow exponentially more expensive the older you become."

"I didn't ask to be born, so suck it!" Sephiroth had crumpled the note and threw it at Hojo, who merely batted it away.

"Eloquently said, as usual," he sighed impatiently. "If you're through making a scene, we all have work to do."

"But what about me?" Sephiroth had whined. "I wanna do stuff too!"

"Like what?" another doctor asked, and they all began to write excitedly.

Sephiroth had fallen back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. Go to the movies. Order pizza. Get a cell phone. Save up for a car. Buy video games. The usual selfish, useless, and wasteful things a child his age wanted from life when presented with the notion of money.

"You have a phone and a television that you can use with permission in the lab break room," Hojo had dismissed. "As for pizza and video games, the less you consume the better. And you're barely thirteen, you don't need to be thinking about cars, yet. In fact, I forbid it."

"Well, great!" Sephiroth declared. "I'll just go sit in my box until it's time for me to come out again!"

"You have a testing session in five minutes, Sephiroth," one of the doctors made the mistake of pointing out.

Sephiroth ignored him and stormed to his room, pushing over anything that wasn't nailed down. If he was going to be held financially responsible for what he currently broke, he wanted to get his money's worth.

And now, Sephiroth wasn't even seventeen, yet. He was looking at another full year before he could experience any sort of freedom, and even then it would be limited. Cadets usually were emancipated after they graduated as full time army members, but not Sephiroth. The labs controlled everything about his life. He even had taken driver's ed at the academy and earned a license, but had nothing to drive. Except for Vincent's car of course, but only with him chain-smoking and nervous in the passenger side.

Yes, gil was the key to his freedom. His genius plan was to sneak into the records department and change the way he was paid by the Academy. If it was done from an Academy computer, Shin-Ra payroll might be suspicious. If it was done from the labs themselves, it would be totally kosher and Sephiroth would finally be able to support himself.

That's where Vincent came in. If Sephiroth could just stay with him at first, he was sure that he could find his own place eventually. It would also give them a chance to get to know one another again, since Vincent had been so busy lately that they barely saw one another at all.

Sephiroth was absolutely sure that Vincent would say yes. All he needed was some money to offer to pay his portion of the bills. He needed to get control of his own funds, and he wanted to do it with as much sneaky espionage as possible.

A month before graduation, Sephiroth got up lazily from his bed in the middle of the night, rubbing his crotch in a semblance of urinary urges. Idly adjusting himself, he trotted sleepily to the lab's bathroom. Once inside, he casually took a leak before he went to wash his hands. He knew the camera was in the soap dispenser, and purposely smeared bubbles all over it.

Then he took out a digital recorder where he'd made an hour long audio of himself sniffing, yawning, and idly humming – and occasionally catching his breath. In other words, the casual sounds of juvenile bathroom masturbation. Hopefully nobody would come knocking on the door, but it was a chance he'd take.

He left the recording playing and climbed up onto the sink. He moved one of the ceiling tiles to pull himself up into the upper ducts of the building. It was dusty up there and dark, but after a lifetime in the facility, Sephiroth knew approximately where he was going.

After a little bit of trial and error, Sephiroth finally found the Medical Records department. He located the motion sensor camera in the corner and attacked it from behind, breaking it delicately so that it still worked, but didn't sweep back and forth. He left it recording the corner of the department that he wouldn't be in.

He quietly lowered himself into the room and fired up one of the computers. He then pulled out his glasses and pushed them high up his nose.

Sephiroth had a friend near his age that was an intern computer jockey in the lab, a tattoo covered Junior Turk named Ricky. Slick Rick they called him in school, and he was interning in the labs to follow his dream of becoming a military weapons programmer. His goal was to press the button to detonate a hydrogen bomb.

Sephiroth thought that was just plain silly. He much preferred to be the hydrogen bomb.

But Ricky was interesting, and Sephiroth had spent that very evening draped backwards over a chair and watching him go through his record keeping duties. Sephiroth found it almost too easy to memorize Ricky's user names and passwords. It was sneaky, and he didn't particularly like using a friend like that, but it boiled down to the fact that Ricky was now a lab worker, and Sephiroth was a lab resident. If Rick had to take the fall for this, it was his own damn fault for letting his guard down.

Sephiroth put in Ricky's password and was granted access to everything he wanted. He quickly found the account that was siphoning his money and changed the routing information to a new bank account that he'd opened for himself. Presto chango!

It was a little disappointing how easy his goals were accomplished. All that espionage would go to waste if he were to leave after two minutes. He sat there, drumming his fingers on the counter and staring at the screen. Anything he ever wanted to know was right at his fingertips.

He had a good, long chuckle at his school friends' medical backgrounds, psychological evaluation results and disciplinary records. Apparently Angeal was so deathly allergic to mangos that he was actually on meds, he couldn't even touch them without being rushed to the hospital. Mako would change that soon, of course.

When the novelty of that faded, Sephiroth wondered what Vincent was up to.

He quickly typed in his name, hoping to find his schedule and if he had kept his promise to try to attend the graduation. The labs usually kept stock of everyone's schedules so they could ambush them into evaluations during their free time. Sephiroth smiled brightly when he saw that Vincent had strictly prohibited himself from any work obligation on that day. Poor dude probably needed a day off anyways, it was clear from his nonstop schedule that Vincent was married to the job.

Then Sephiroth became more curious. He looked at Vincent's official badge pictures and laughed to himself. He was able to find catalogued photos all the way back to Vincent's days as a cadet. There was not even a chance that Vincent wasn't bullied for being a geek as a teenager.

Vincent had the cowlick, the zits, the glasses, and the awkwardness to complete a perfect nerd package. But the pictures almost immediately morphed from a total dweeb, to a very handsome teenager, to a confident young Turk.

Sephiroth explored a little more, and took a pause when he found his own name in Vincent's medical files : Vincent Valentine will never be asked to submit to a standardized paternity test, but is one of the possible male genetic donors for the S Project.

That note in particular had been written over seventeen years ago by Lucretia Crescent.

Sephiroth read it over and over, and searched desperately through the entire file for more information, but found nothing more whatsoever about Vincent's genetic "donation". He then tried to access his own file, or his mother's… but the security clearance was way too high for Slick Rick's intern passcode.

How vile. How absolutely disgusting.

Sephiroth wondered if Vincent even knew. His heart pounded at the notion that he might have an actual living family member, a father. He felt little to no connection to his mother, but whatever. She was dead.

The point was… Vincent might be his dad! If Sephiroth had to pick anyone in the whole world he'd want to be his father, it was Vincent Valentine, no contest.

Sephiroth Valentine, he thought to himself. A real last name, not just a brand like Shin-Ra. And a real relationship to go with it, Vincent had always been someone he'd looked up to.

And even if the note from his mother had said "possible genetic donor", it was already a done deal in Sephiroth's heart. He would never think of Vincent again without the certainty that the man was his father.

Sephiroth quickly erased his virtual footprints around the Shin-Ra medical network and turned off the computer. He went back into the ceiling, and back to the bathroom where his tape was still playing undisturbed, and the camera was still obscured by bubbles. He flushed the toilet again, washed his hands again, and left without casting any suspicion on himself at all.

The week before graduation was like torture. Sephiroth had mentally checked out, and it was awful to have to sit in the classrooms, knowing in a week's time he'd actually have rank. But he put up with it the best he could manage, and finally the day came where he donned a SOLDIER's uniform instead of a school boy's.

It was early morning, but Sephiroth couldn't help but prance around the labs, making sure everyone saw him in the brand new threads. He loved the way it fit, the way it felt, the suspenders, the boots, the pockets… Sephiroth felt sexy in a SOLDIER's uniform, and it was the first time in his life that he could honestly say he looked hot.

Once he was satisfied with the catcalls of the lab's employees, he went to the phones to call up his friends.

"Do you have any idea what time is it?" Genesis had moaned sleepily.

"When are you going to be at the auditorium?" Sephiroth asked.

"At eleven. A whole three hours from now, asshole." And with that, Genesis hung up on him.

Sephiroth called up the next number he knew. Angeal sounded a bit more awake on the other end. "I'm up, jerk. You just called Genesis."

"How'd you know?"

"I'm right here next to him."

Sephiroth whined, "You guys had a party last night? Why wasn't I invited?"

"…Get a clue, Seph."

"Huh?"

"See you in a while, kiddo," was all Angeal would say about it, and hung up on him as well. Sephiroth continued his wake up call to his group of friends, ensuring that no future SOLDIER was left behind and that everyone was fully aware that this was graduation day.

When he was done making a nuisance of himself, he dialed Vincent's number.

"Hey, SOLDIER," Vincent answered with a clear smile in his voice.

Sephiroth was so giddy that his dad didn't forget what day it was, he nearly bounced in his seat. "Hey! You're gonna be there today, right?"

"Of course I am, there's no way I'd miss it. What time is it at, again?"

"Eleven," Sephiroth grinned. "You don't have to be there for the whole damn thing, I'm sure they'll yap for a billion hours."

"I'll stick around for all of it. You gonna party tonight?"

"Yup!" Sephiroth agreed. "But not until later. Maybe we could hang out this afternoon if you're not busy?"

"That'd be real cool, Seph. I'm so proud of you."

Those words carried Sephiroth throughout the rest of his morning. When it was finally time for the graduation ceremony, he was so wound up that he could barely keep himself still. As with all Shin-Ra activities, they loved their pomp and circumstance; the music and the speeches and the introductions and doling out great quotes for the press to eat up.

Anyone who was anyone spoke for about a hundred hours apiece. By the time they actually began calling the names of the new SOLDIERs to collect their diplomas and belts, Sephiroth was whining quietly like a nervous puppy.

When they finally got to the letter 'S', Sephiroth's butt was hovering impatiently over his seat. After a few boys' last names that began with 'S', the headmaster finally called, "Sephiroth."

As with most of the names, there were cheers and good-natured jeers. The entire class had taken time to get over the fact that Sephiroth had no last name, and the additional oddity only served as one more way he stood out from the rest. His eyes, his hair, his age – the fact that he only bore a single name was dead last on the list of things that made him unique.

But Sephiroth loved the sound of his own name in that moment. Before it was done rolling of the headmaster's tongue, he was trotting down the aisle and bopping up the steps to the stage. He accepted his diploma, formally greeted all of the Generals, and then finally, finally received his SOLDIER belt.

The diploma was toilet paper, and curtseying in front of the Generals meant nothing to him. The belt was the best part. Sephiroth couldn't resist smelling the fresh leather as it was handed to him.

Then it was over. He was ushered back to the seats where the new SOLDIERs were, all helping one another into their iconic belts. Sephiroth sat with his school friends, and eventually had his own belt snapped into place. It completed his uniform, sealed the deal, made him totally and inarguably legit.

He was now Sergeant Sephiroth.

He spent the rest of the ceremony lost in his own thoughts, his fingers working over the details of his belt and suspenders. The rest of his new SOLDIER peers passed the stage, and then it was time for the future Turks. One by one they were called, but instead of a belt, they were presented with a black tie.

After that was the saddest part of graduation. Those who passed without honors, neither SOLDIERs nor Turks. They wore the plain blue uniforms of the regular army. There were more of these names than any other. Perhaps fifty new SOLDIERs were inducted that day, fifteen Turks, and roughly two hundred infantry soldiers – barely any higher in rank than a cadet.

Sephiroth frowned as the headmaster then gave a short speech in honor of Jeffrey Smithins. He didn't know the boy personally, but apparently Jeff wanted to be a SOLDIER and had passed the physical exam with flying colors… but had failed his materia requirements. Materia use was half the job, and those with no aptitude for it had no place in SOLDIER.

Jeff's roommate had found him dead in their bathroom five days prior to graduation. He'd overdosed on Tylenol, of all things. Suicide didn't compute in Sephiroth's mind. There was nothing worse than not existing, even if you had to start at the very bottom of a very steep military totem pole. It might have been easy from his lofty vantage point, but he knew for certain that determination was all it took to make one's way through the ranks.

Determination, and lots and lots of ass kissing. Everyone had to pay their dues.

When the ceremony was over, the cluster of ex-students all but tore the building apart in their haste to get out into the world. Some met with parents and family, some sped away in large groups to be plastered on the eve of their adulthood, and some stuck around to brown nose with the higher ranking teachers and program directors.

Sephiroth spotted Vincent in the mess of humanity and pushed his way towards him.

Without thinking anything of it, he threw his arms over Vincent's head and hugged him with an openness he hadn't possessed since he was a small child. Vincent accepted the hug readily, and squeezed Sephiroth back with a growl of approval.

"You look pretty goofy in this uniform," he teased, snapping Sephiroth's suspenders.

"Yeah, I know," Sephiroth agreed sheepishly, even though he privately felt like the sexiest thing on Earth. It was much cooler to just agree that he looked weird though, it was part of being a male.

"You look grown up, though," Vincent amended. "You're not a little kid anymore, hm? Makes me feel old."

Sephiroth perked up slightly. "Well, you are old."

"Remind me to tell you that when you're 35," Vincent muttered. Then he smiled and took the liberty of messing up Sephiroth's perfectly sleek silver hair, and laughed when then self-conscious teen yowled and went about fixing it. "Let's go eat."

Sephiroth nodded happily, quickly forgetting about his hair. "I'm staaarved! I couldn't even eat yesterday, I was buggin' out!"

Vincent guided Sephiroth out into the parking lot to his car, and listened with a smile as the teenager babbled nonstop. He had already gotten his first mission to be completed the following week, and was telling Vincent every detail that he knew about it.

"Hey Seph, you aren't exactly supposed to be tellin' me any of this. I'm a Turk, remember?"

"Yeah whatever," Sephiroth waved away any concern about confidentiality and kept chattering. Inside however, he was working towards creating a dialogue. More talking meant more words, and more chances to slip out two very important pieces of information to Vincent.

The first was that he now knew Vincent was his father. The second was that Sephiroth wanted to move in immediately.

Vincent slipped edgewise into Sephiroth's talking, "Hey, you wanna go change before we go out?"

Sephiroth wanted to never take off his SOLDIER uniform again. But on the other hand, he was planning on staying out all night with his friends anyways, and a change of clothes would be wise. He could eat with Vincent and then just go to the party straight after with no lab interference to stop him. "Yeah, sure. It'll just take a sec."

Vincent drove to the lab entrance and parked. He followed Sephiroth inside, noticing with a smirk how his footsteps became quicker and lighter once within the lab's walls. They silently snuck to his room and Sephiroth began to grab clothes together.

Sephiroth suddenly got a thought. He owned almost nothing. He could totally pack all of his clothes into the bag right then and there, and go home with Vincent that very night. He might never have to reaurn to the lab again… ever.

That notion was so intoxicating that Sephiroth nearly whispered, "…Vincent?"

He looked up at that. Sephiroth rarely said his full name, if ever. "Yeah?"

"…You knew my mom, didn't you?"

"Well sure," Vincent nodded, and took a seat on Sephiroth's bed. He looked up at the teenager, seeing a swirl of radical emotions in his green cat eyes. He of course had no idea where they were stemming from, and wrongly assumed the boy finally wanted to know about his mother. "She was a really great lady, Seph. You remind me so much of her."

"So…" Sephiroth then continued, caring little to hear about the woman he murdered as a newborn. As revenge from beyond the grave, she left him in the lab. They were even as far as Sephiroth was concerned. "How did you know her exactly?"

Vincent paused. "She um… well, she was my good friend."

"Like your girlfriend?"

Vincent chuckled, and it was a private joke with himself and a women who was long gone. "…That depends on what day of the week you asked her. Sometimes she was, sometimes she wasn't. Most of the time she wasn't. She was just my friend."

"But sometimes she was your girlfriend," Sephiroth prodded.

"Yes…sometimes she was."

"Did you live together?" Sephiroth asked.

"…Yeah, I moved in with her eventually," Vincent answered, beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable with where this conversation was heading.

"So you had slept with my mom a lot?"

"I don't really feel right talkin' about this." Vincent suddenly stood up, and edged around Sephiroth to the door. "Let's go get some pizza."

"You're my dad, aren't you?"

Vincent froze. With his incriminating silence, Sephiroth became more convinced than ever. He was smiling, looking victorious and hastily throwing clothes into his schoolbag.

"Vin, I dunno if you knew or not! You probably didn't, right? It's awesome though, isn't it? I mean, I'm not gonna start callin' you dad or anything, and it's not like you have to do anything extra, either. But I was thinkin' that you could let me stay with you for a while – "

"What?" Vincent finally balked.

Sephiroth turned to him with a radiant smile. "Just until I get my own place! I mean, I'm a grown up now, right? It's stupid for me to have to live here, knowin' what we know now. And it's not like I'm expectin' you to put up with me for nothin' just because you're my dad, I'll pay rent and stu – "

"I'm not your dad."

Sephiroth's smile faded slightly. His eyes became a bit duller, but he kept his positive energy flowing. "…Like I said… I don't hafta call you that."

"Seph, I dated your mom. I was young and stupid, she was older and hot, and we had a thing. But buddy… there's no way I could be your dad. I'm sorry. I'm just not."

With that, Vincent turned to leave. He needed to smoke, and he needed to be out of Sephiroth's tiny room, and out of the oppressive lab altogether. For the first time in many years, he had the sudden feeling that Lucretia was going to walk into sight any moment, turn a corner and brighten as she saw him.

He had to leave.

Sephiroth was stunned at Vincent's abrupt retreat. The vision he had created in his head of Vincent and his mother had been decidedly more romantic than a science department MILF and a young, horny Turk. He thought maybe their love was a secret affair… something pretty.

Sephiroth wasn't so easily distracted from his goal though. He grabbed his belongings and ran after Vincent. He found him striding towards the exit and rushed to his heels.

"…So what, then? I mean… it doesn't matter to me if you really are my dad or not. I always kinda felt like you were. Like even if you're technically not, you still are to me inside, because you've always been there for me since I was little. We've always gotten along, too. Is it so wrong to feel that way?"

"Yes," Vincent stated firmly. "I'm your friend, Seph. I met you when you were a baby. You're a cute, funny kid. I care about you. You can't go tryin' to make it more than what it is."

"…So can I still stay with you?" Sephiroth asked anyways.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why!"

"Wait for it.. because I said so! That's what dads are supposed to say, right?"

Sephiroth growled, "Please. Don't treat me like I'm stupid."

"I'd say you're actin' pretty stupid, kiddo."

"It's not stupid! You are my dad!" Sephiroth argued, angry beyond reason that his feelings for Vincent were being received so poorly. Were genetics really everything when it came to family?

They both simultaneously winced against the sun as Sephiroth followed Vincent outside. He squinted over at the white headed teenager, who in response flashed one of those huge, charming salesman smiles that only he could conjure. Despite himself, Vincent had to grin back, but then wished he hadn't when genuine hope sparked in Sephiroth's eyes.

"Listen to yourself. How could that be possible?"

"You had unprotected intercourse with my mother roughly around the time of my conception." Sephiroth stated clinically.

"Oh, pleeease! What are you even talkin' about? We're talkin' about nothing. You don't even look like me.. We are talking about nothing!"

Vincent dropped down into the driver's seat, and gave a long-suffering groan as Sephiroth hung childishly on the open car door, "I won't bother you, Vin, I promise. I have my own money, now. I'll buy all my own food and I'll keep everything clean. I swear! And I won't ever have friends or girls over when you're not home. Did you know I can cook?"

"Off."

Sephiroth released the door and it slammed shut. Vincent rolled down the window and stared at Sephiroth.

"…Why not?" Sephiroth finally whimpered.

"Seph, I don't know what the hell you've gotten yourself convinced of, or how. But I am not your father."

"Bullshit," Sephiroth drawled slowly and deliberately.

"Watch your mouth."

Both men glared at each other through the window.

"There's a chance," Sephiroth pleaded.

The engine rumbled to life.

"No. There's not." And in the way that he taught Sephiroth last summer, he threw the car into reverse, and squealed out of sight.

Sephiroth stood in the empty parking space, wearing the SOLDIER uniform he had worked so hard to earn.

Openly denied.

In full SOLDIER garb, in broad daylight, Sephiroth cried.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life."

This obviously wasn't what the General was expecting to be said after such a heartfelt and emotionally painful revelation. He was too surprised to even speak, and felt himself blush hotly under his blonde lover's blue eyed scrutiny.

Cloud shook his head. "This has gone on for too long, and for no reason. You're going out there, and you're going to say something to him. Fix this."

"I thought you were on my side," Sephiroth frowned.

"I am on your side. Yours is just the lesser of two stupids."

Sephiroth sighed through his nose. "…You may have a point."

"I can't believe two grown men have ignored each other for so long for no reason! Vincent was obviously heartbroken and surprised, he didn't actually mean any of that! And you could have found a better way of telling him than just blurting it out with your bags packed and ready to move in! Were you fucking crazy as a teenager?"

"Alright already, shut up!" Sephiroth grumpily agreed. After recounting his experiences out loud, maybe … maybe it wasn't such a painful thing, afterall. Maybe his teenage self had overreacted just a tad. Maybe he'd grown up enough to see that.

That realization didn't make anything easier, though. Sephiroth leaned on the counter and thought to himself, wondering what words could possibly convey how hurt and rejected he had felt that afternoon so long ago.

Cloud poked his arm. "Hurry up."

"Quit bossin' me around!" Sephiroth snipped at him.

Sephiroth entered the living room and scanned around. Vincent wasn't there.

He took a breath of relief, before he saw movement on Julie and Rhonda's back porch. They owned a small backyard garden in the middle of the city, and through the back door window Sephiroth saw that Vincent was outside smoking cigarettes among other nicotine addicted Turks.

He made his way to the patio door, pausing with his hand on the doorknob for a moment before opening it. Their garden area was barely ten feet by five feet, and Sephiroth's large presence made the lower ranking Turks stand up straighter. He marched into the small area and stood in front of his father.

"I need to talk to you."

Vincent blew his smoke away from Sephiroth and put out the cigarette. "Okay."

"You're a fuckin' asshole," Sephiroth hissed before he could even think about what he was saying. The words flowed out of his mouth like an involuntary bodily function.

The entire outside garden posse froze. Then all snapped their heads in Vincent's direction to hear his reaction to an outright attack from one of the SOLDIER Generals.

Vincent merely paused before placing a new cigarette between his lips. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Sephiroth agreed. "You shoulda just stayed away if you didn't want me."

Cloud moved to the side as a small sea of suited Turks immediately snubbed their cigarettes and migrated inside like a worried flock of crows. They probably thought it was some sort of lover's quarrel. Cloud closed the patio door when they had all flowed inside, but ducked below the window and pressed his ear to the door to eavesdrop.

To Cloud's surprised, three younger Turks did the same, almost crowding him entirely out of listening zone. Cloud elbowed one of them. "Who the fuck are you guys?"

"Shut up and listen," the boy answered, and ripped open a bag of chips and began stuffed them into his face, chewing softly so the sound inside his mouth wouldn't drown out the conversation.

"Wait!" the pudgiest Turk said, and brought out a listening device. He attached a sucker to the door and began passing out earbuds.

"This is private!" Cloud insisted, but took some of the chips and a pair of earbuds.

"I'm Marty, and these are my partners Jack, and Cole. We've been watching this develop for months Cloud, and you are not taking this from us," the third young Turk declared and leaned on his teammate's shoulders for balance.

"How do you know my na – ?" Cloud whispered suspiciously, but all three young Turks shushed him simultaneously.

Zack was passing through the hall when he caught the four of them crouched by the door. He crawled up next to them and peeked outside to see what was so interesting. "Oh hey! Look who's finally talking it out!"

Cloud groaned, "Not you, too!"

"Pass me some earphones!" Zack cried to the Turks, and Cloud handed him one of his to shut up him.

Vincent was talking so quietly that only pieces of what he was saying were audible through the door, "…me I wanted to stay away. Seein' you … was hell for me. I was never … supposed to and that's how it… wanted it."

"You sure didn't do jack shit about it," Sephiroth was arguing loudly. "So you shoulda just let me rot, not come around just to ease whatever bullshit guilt you had about some old girlfriend's kid."

"Nothin' about goin' to see you eased any guilt I had, trust me," Vincent huffed with a little more volume, his voice not raised but his tone stressed. "Nothin' about you has ever made me feel good. I hated goin' there to see you."

All five eavesdroppers gasped.

"So why didn't you just stay away?" Sephiroth repeated, his voice wavering slightly. "You let them have me, so why not just stay away from me?"

"I didn't let them have you."

"Yes, you did," Sephiroth hissed. "It doesn't matter if you're my father or not, I was a little kid. How could you leave me there for even one day knowin' what they were doin' to me?"

"They would have killed us," Vincent said point blank and devoid of emotion. "You aren't that special, Seph. They can make another one if they really wanted to. And Turks like me are a dime a dozen. We wouldn't have been missed."

The eavesdropping men all made guttural noises, looking at each other with pained expressions.

Outside in the garden, Sephiroth remained with his feet planted wide apart. Despite his confident stance, he was looking at the ground. He didn't say anything immediately, and seemed unable to respond.

Inside he knew the corporation that he was born into was indeed that cruel. The labs considered him important enough to create in the first place. They wouldn't have let him go freely at the suggestion of a Turk, especially if that Turk were his father. And if Vincent had kidnapped him, it would have been death for the both of them.

Vincent let the silence stretch. He would have gladly lost his life in an effort to save Lucretia's child… if he truly believed that his freedom was something that she would have wanted. The ugly truth was that she signed her child's life over to the labs. That was what she wanted. It would have made her proud of both of them to remain unconnected, for Sephiroth to remain true to his course, for Vincent to succeed in the ranks of Turk.

Right?

Sephiroth finally spoke softly. "I shouldn't say anything, then. Can't change anything. Nothin' about it satisfies me. It never will."

"Check out the bigger picture, General," Vincent pointed out somewhat sarcastically. "For a really weird little kid, you've done alright for yourself."

Sephiroth frowned harder. "You didn't even say anything to me when I was inaugurated."

Vincent dropped his eyes to the floor. "I was there…I wanted to."

"You didn't."

"What do you want from me?" Vincent's posture slipped. "You're a General, you've got money, you've got a decent group of friends. Lushes mostly, but good people. And apparently you've got a boyfriend, right?"

"You got a problem with that?" Sephiroth murmured, lifting his eyes to meet Vincent's.

"Doesn't affect me," Vincent said flippantly. "Just didn't think you'd turn out like that."

"Well I did. What business is it of yours?"

"And it's your business why I made the bad decisions that I made twenty years ago?" Vincent crossed his arms calmly.

Bad decisions. Sephiroth smiled brightly despite his urge to drop a tidal wave of righteously pissed off flame upon the entire city. "I love him. And I fuck him every chance I get. Just like you fucked my mother."

Vincent's red eyes flared. "Don't."

"Would you rather I was straight and pumpin' my shit into some crazy scientist bitch?" Sephiroth pressed on. "My mom must have been a fuckin' whack job to do this shit she did."

"You didn't know her, Seph," Vincent growled dangerously. "Don't disrespect her like that."

"Not only was my mom a slut, she was a talentless slut. That smartest thing she ever did was realize she couldn't do anything else for science but spread her fuckin' legs and get knocked up." Sephiroth laughed, suddenly felt elated to shit all over the memory of the woman who abandoned him in the labs, signed his body and life away to Shin-Ra before he was born, who never once showed him any sign of her love in this life or any other.

The General found himself horrified at the intensity of his sorrow where she was concerned. He didn't want to explore it, he wanted to ignore it as he had been for twenty-two years. But he couldn't stop himself, and his laughter quickly transformed into dry sobs. "I'm glad she's dead. I'm glad I never met her. I hate her."

Any anger Vincent might have felt dissipated at the sight of Sephiroth in such turmoil. He took a step forward, but Sephiroth quickly covered his face and rubbed his eyes furiously, physically threatening his own body to not cry again. Without further hesitation, Vincent hugged him.

He wasn't hugged back, but the man that his little boy had become leaned against him slightly.

"She woulda loved you, Seph," Vincent finally said, but he wasn't sure if it was true or not.

Vincent couldn't help but wonder what her reaction would have been to see her boy in flesh and blood and not an idea on a piece of paper. He couldn't imagine Lucretia, the warm, funny, possessive woman that she was, let her own child live like Sephiroth had. Seeing that beautiful baby with his bright blonde hair and big green eyes and his cute little mouth full of sharp teeth… there's no way she wouldn't have fallen in love with him.

Vincent had, after all. But he knew he wasn't Sephiroth's father. He also knew there was some sort of mystical crazy science bullshit going on that he was never fully allowed to know about.

But he loved Lucretia, and he trusted her. He wished he could have given her the child she was so desperate to have. If only to spare her the discomfort of being the lab's… well. She was with almost every man there, on schedule, trying to procreate their precious specimen S.

But she was having a hard time conceiving, and the process was being drawn out much farther than anyone would have hoped. Some of the unnamed men in the lab were becoming very accustomed to this schedule, and she spent most of her nights in tears.

Vincent went to see her in the lab every chance he got, if only to remind the entire facility that this was for science, and that this woman had a claim staked on her. Vincent had the idea in his heart that love helped create children. He asked her to stop, to just let him be the one.

She said, "That's not a good idea."

"Why isn't it?" Vincent had pressed. "You don't like fuckin' those disgusting – ?"

"I don't want to have this fight again. I'm not fucking anybody. I'm receiving hastily delivered genetic donations. And you know I don't enjoy it," she explained, wrapping her arms around herself defensively. "There's just no way I'd want you to be the father of this specimen."

"Why?" Vincent asked, just one more time.

"There's just no point in getting attached to it," she answered, shrugging her shoulders sadly.

Vincent spared Sephiroth this explanation, though. There were some things that he just didn't need to know. His own mother's cold indifference was one of them.

Sephiroth sniffed and moved away from Vincent, his eyes dry. "Doesn't matter if she'd love me or not. She's dead. And if she weren't, I'd still hate her."

"Fair enough," Vincent rationalized. "Do you hate me, Seph?"

"That's a stupid question." Sephiroth looked away. "…Do you ha – ?"

Vincent didn't let him get the foolish question out of his mouth. "You make me mad as hell sometimes but you're… I dunno. You're just my kid."

"Why didn't you just let me stay with you?" Sephiroth finally spat out.

Vincent leaned against the house. "I was scared."

"Of what?" Sephiroth pressed.

"…Disappointing your mother," Vincent admitted, then quickly changed the subject. "It's not like you needed me, anyways. You landed on top, and that's fuckin' cool, Seph. You probably did better without my help."

"I woulda liked havin' you around, though." Sephiroth was tired of standing and leaned on his haunches against the house.

"Well why didn't you just come talk to me?" Vincent asked, and held out his pack of cigarettes to offer one.

"I was waitin' for you to come say you were sorry," Sephiroth admitted loftily, and plucked one out of the pack.

"Well, I was waitin' for you to come tell me it was okay to say I was sorry," Vincent huffed. "You're a pretty scary dude, now."

Sephiroth refused to smile, although he acknowledged the fact that the man had attempted to make a joke. He accepted Vincent's lighter and lit the cigarette in his mouth – trying not to let on to the fact that he had never smoked before in his life. "Did you just feel like you didn't need to see me anymore 'cause I grew up?"

"You might be taller, but you still look like a little kid to me," Vincent admitted. "But you've got your own shit goin' on. You don't need me to look after you, anymore."

"I never needed that from you. But it was nice to get visited once in a while." Sephiroth didn't drag from the lit cigarette, he let it hang from his fingertips and watched it burn. "It was basically…like… the highlight of my childhood."

Vincent swallowed. "I never knew what I was doin' with you. I couldn't take you home with me when you were little, but I wanted to try and make you as happy as I could, anyways."

Sephiroth made a thoughtful sound and tapped a bit of ash from his unsmoked cigarette to the ground. "It wouldn't have taken away from my happiness to have thought that you were my dad. Even if you weren't."

Vincent slumped slightly. "I don't even know why you wanna talk to me."

"No, you don't get out that easy," Sephiroth muttered up at him. "Don't put it on me, because you need to let me know if you want to be in my life."

Vincent exhaled and looked at the smoggy Midgar sky. "I couldn't be your dad when you were little, Sephiroth… I couldn't pretend to be your dad in my head and leave you in that lab, and still stay sane. I wish I could have been. I always wanted to be your dad."

"You are my dad," Sephiroth told him dryly.

Vincent closed his eyes. "But I'm not."

"…But you still are."

"I'm sorry," Vincent said after a moment.

"You should be," Sephiroth said, and snubbed out the cigarette.

"You gonna forgive me, or are you gonna be a dick about it?"

"I'm gonna be a dick." Sephiroth finally smiled, but attempted to hide it behind his hand. Vincent made a fist and threw it against his arm, which resulted in a thick smack upon rock hard flesh.

"Jesus Christ, you got beefy." Vincent made a disgusted face as he began to squeeze Sephiroth's biceps. "I don't buy it, this is some sort of muscle suit, isn't it? You're not juicin' are you? Flex for me."

"No!" Sephiroth crossed his arms. Unfortunately, Cloud had dressed him in a somewhat revealing sleeveless shirt, and there was nowhere for his impressive physique to hide.

Vincent wasn't letting him get away with it. "Look at you! You're wearin' a little girl's shirt to show off for your boyfriend, and you're bashful now? Bullshit!"

"Stop lookin' at me!" Sephiroth whined. "You're just jealous!"

"Jealous?" Vincent snorted. "I should kick your ass for that."

"No way!" Sephiroth laughed egotistically. "You're old and brittle. I'd put you in a wheelchair where you belong."

"Care to back up that statement?"

"Yeah."

"Good thing we're already outside," Vincent declared.

Behind the door, Zack, Cloud, and the three young Turks slowly and discreetly moved to their knees to see what was happening outside to accompany the noise of play fighting. Cloud smiled as he watched Sephiroth pummel Vincent like a playful puppy, and Vincent beat the crap out of his son in good spirits.

Cloud smiled at Zack and whispered, "You're psychic about the past. Tell me if Vincent is really Sephiroth's dad or not."

Zack tilted his head and stared without seeing. Cloud watched in fascination as Zack's icy blue eyes went out of focus. "Well, one things for sure – Vincent and Seph's totally hot mom shared a very healthy sex life!"

"Jesus! That's not what I wanna know!" Cloud laughed.

Zack continued to stare at Vincent. "…Lucy was secretive, even from herself."

"Don't be cryptic," Cole cut in impatiently, thirsty for the truth. "Tell us the verdict. Father or not?"

Zack's eyes came back into focus and he shrugged happily. "I have no idea!"

"Lame," Jack declared. "What kind of psychic are you?"

"A crappy one," Zack admitted, and produced a peanut butter cookie from his pocket and munched it. "Vincent's favorite position is piledriver, that's all I can see."

"Gross!" everyone cried simultaneously, except for Jack who bellowed, "Yeah!"

Suddenly Sephiroth and Vincent stopped playing. Vincent hugged Sephiroth's neck and began to lead him to the door, talking about getting a beer. The five eavesdroppers fell to their hands and knees and scuttled across the carpet towards the living room.

Tseng was making his way to the bathroom and was confronted with the hastily crawling posse. He pressed himself to the wall to allowed them to travel past him like a family of crabs. He decided to just not ask.

They hurried into the living room and all fell onto a couch moments before Vincent and Sephiroth entered together. Sephiroth gave Cloud a suspicious smile and the couchful of men all smiled back at him. Zack was pressed into Cloud who was shoved in next to the three baby Turks who were constantly tailing him.

Sephiroth suspected that somehow his lover, Zack, and the nosy Turks probably heard every word that was said outside. Cloud made his guilt apparent by showing no questions on his face, only approval. Maybe someday he'd learn how to school his features to hide his sneakiness, but Sephiroth hoped he never did.

He looked over at Vincent, who elbowed him farewell before joining a group of his peers in the next room. Sephiroth then approached Zack, and sat down on top of him.

While the brunet squealed and struggled under Sephiroth's considerable weight, he looked casually at Cloud. "You were right."

"Music to my ears," Cloud gloated, and leaned up to kiss him.

Marty, Cole and Jack all bubbled in private excitement that their plan to get their Commander and the General in each other's path had finally worked. They each opened up a can of beer, and gave each other cheers on an operation well accomplished.

Eventually the newborn babies were exhausted and the hostesses were tired of keeping everyone quiet. The newborns were put to bed upstairs, the baby monitors were turned up to full volume, and the real party began.

Sephiroth spent most of the time talking shop with the other SOLDIERs, while Cloud got heavily involved in a drinking game with the baby Turks. It was a variation on beer pong, except with hard liquor and shot glasses. All four were stinking drunk by the time they realized the ping pong ball was too big to even fit in the glasses. Aerith spent her time with the new mothers, noshing on fattening snacks while trading diet tips. The Turks hung around like bats, darkening the corners of the room, but making everyone in the house feel somewhat warmed by their presence.

As the night drew to a close, most of the partygoers had left and the babies had woken up for an evening feeding. Cloud was blitzed and unable to keep his hands off of Sephiroth, so Rhonda threw them and everyone else out.

"Come see me again soon," Rhonda said, kissing Sephiroth's cheek repeatedly before waving him and his drunken blond boyfriend outside.

"Bye, guys!" Zack called to them, before he and Aerith backed out of the driveway and split.

"Hop up," Sephiroth ordered, not wanting to have to chase a drunken Cloud through the streets on the way home. Cloud cooed wordlessly as he clumsily climbed up onto Sephiroth's back and wrapped his arms around his neck. They only made it to the end of Rhonda's walkway before one of the departing cars stopped, and Vincent hopped out.

"Hey!" he said breathlessly, his face blushed with alcohol. "What's your number, now?"

Sephiroth was a little taken aback. He let Cloud hold onto him while he pulled out his phone and exchanged telephone numbers with Vincent, his heart pounding all the while.

"I'll see you later," Vincent said, looking into Sephiroth's eyes. It was impossible to hug him without also involving Cloud who was nearly passed out on his back, so he wrapped an arm around the both of them. "Be good. Give the dumb kid something to eat when you get home."

"I will," Sephiroth nodded, still not fully adjusted to speaking with Vincent again, but well on his way. "Later!"

"Later! Oh hey, there's another Slayer movie comin' out in a few weeks, you in?" Vincent called over his shoulder, and squawked as his ride began to roll away without him.

"Definitely," Sephiroth laughed as he watched Vincent run to catch up to the car. He was forced to dive through the back window, and it swerved out of sight.

"Sephirothh," Cloud slurred against his ear before rubbing a messy kiss across his cheek. "Arre we goingg home, now?"

"Yup. Hang on tight." Sephiroth trotted happily down the sidewalk with his arms secure under Cloud's legs, and the sounds of his lover's gentle snoring in his ear.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

The next day when Cloud had finally recovered from his hangover, he warmed himself a cozy spot next to Sephiroth on the couch.

They were tucked beneath a blanket and face to face with a full evening of Midgar's Next Top Model. They both had beverages and snacks readily at hand, and had donned loose pajamas and clean socks. They literally could not have been more comfortable, and it was the very essence of what they intended the rest of their vacation to be.

Cloud kept shifting though, sighing quietly and looking at the clock.

"What is it?" Sephiroth finally asked, lifting his head from Cloud's shoulder when he wiggled yet again.

Cloud released a puff of air. "You think it's too late to call Nibelheim?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "I dunno. Just call and see if she picks up."

But it wasn't Cloud's mother that he wanted to call. He looked at the clock again. It would have been close to nine at night over there, and he didn't know anything about the person he wanted to speak with. Their schedule, their life, or whether they would even answer.

Cloud kissed between Sephiroth's eyes. "I'm gonna go call in your room, okay?"

"Kay," Sephiroth said, although his attention was more focused on the television. Cloud got up and Sephiroth seemed uncomfortable without something to lean on. He grumpily began to recalibrate himself, and without looking up he murmured, "…Hurry."

Cloud smiled, and made the long walk down the hallway before he closed himself into Sephiroth's bedroom. He paced for a moment before sitting down on the bed. He tapped his socked feet against the floor, wondering what to do.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and decided the first baby step was opening it. He stared at a new photo of himself and Sephiroth from the party the night before. Sephiroth's long arm stretched out to take the picture, and both of Cloud's arms wound around his neck. Their expressions were soft, open, happy.

Cloud rubbed his thumb against the image, wiping away a stray smear off the screen. He then sorted through the menus, to his father's phone number.

His other thumb caressed the send button for a moment, before slowly pressing and releasing it. Cloud quickly tucked his legs beneath him and hunkered down as he listened to electricity connect the call.

After a few tones of ringing, the phone was rather cheerfully answered. "Yello!"

Cloud winced a little. He would never answer a phone 'yello'. How could his own father answer a phone that way? The man sounded content, confident, and like he was having a great day.

Cloud wanted nothing more than to ruin all of that. "Father?"

"…Cloud," the voice answered softly, and it was evident that the man was severely taken aback.

Good. Cloud was glad to be so easily granted the superior footing. "Yeah, it's me. Are you busy?"

"No, not at all." His father seemed to be tripping over himself. "How are you?"

What a question.

"Let me start at the beginning," Cloud took a deep breath. "Since the day you left when I was eleven months old, my mother worked every single day to raise me on her own."

His father said nothing, so he slowly continued. "She worked her ass off, worked so much harder than she had to because you weren't there to help her. I waited for you, thinking you might come back and help her, make her happy, make us a real family… but you never did."

"Cloud, please don't – "

"Forgive me for interrupting, father. But as I was saying, I grew up a nervous wreck. Nibelheim will always be my home, but they called my family trash, my mother a slut, and me a bastard. And to be honest, it's all true. And to top it all off, I'm gay. Really, really gay."

Cloud shamelessly continued, righteous anger boiling his words, "So I left town to join the Shin-Ra army because being surrounded by a few hundred thousand men sounded a lot better than being trapped in Nibelheim. Since I've come here, I've made friends. You can't understand how huge that is for me. People actually like me here, and I sometimes don't even know how to operate because of that. I'm doing well in school, and I enjoy being in the army more than I ever dreamed I would. And as if that weren't wonderful enough, I've fallen in love with the most wonderful man in the world. So now, not only do I have my beautiful mother back at home, I have friends, a boyfriend that I would die for… an actual future. For the first time in my life I feel like I belong somewhere.

"I know I'm still young, and my accomplishments don't sound like much to you. But goddamnit, it's the difference between hating yourself and the idea that maybe you're not so bad after all. It's thinking that maybe your life is worth getting up every day for."

Cloud took a few breaths, and in the absence of his voice his father spoke. "I'm so happy you found something you love to do, Cloud. I'm glad you found people that respect you, because I know you deserve it."

Cloud didn't need to hear that from him, and was heated enough to nod his head in agreement. "You're damn right I deserve it."

Then his father had the nerve to laugh. "You sound just like your mother."

"Good! I hope I sound like her. I hope I sound like a mountain goat fucking piece of Nibelheim trash to you. That's what I am and a lot of people think it's pretty cool. You know, some people actually do think about me every day, they don't just say it in letters with a fucking check because they're guilty. They call me, and actually care about what's up with me, they wouldn't be satisfied by me just saying I'm fine."

"I tried Cloud," his father interjected. "I do think about you, and I do care. I wish you were still here – "

"Well I'm not there anymore! And I can't believe you went to my mother's house with your other kids! How dare you? My mother didn't need to see you, or them, and neither did I! You should have stayed under whatever rock you crawled under fifteen years ago. You never even saw my first birthday, and you wanna tell me you think about me every single day? That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard! I think you're a…."

Cloud trailed off when the door quietly opened, and Sephiroth poked his head into the room with a terribly concerned face. It was then that Cloud realized he had been shouting.

Not crying, though. Just shouting. Cloud closed his mouth. When Sephiroth saw that he seemed relatively unharmed, he backed out gently closed the door to give him privacy.

"…What do you think I am?" his father asked somberly from the other side of the connection.

"I dunno," Cloud admitted softly. "I don't even know you. Who are you? Where the hell have you been all this time?"

"…Well. My name is Aiden. I'm thirty–four. I'm not a smart man, but I'm considerably more intelligent than I was when I was eighteen and met your mother. I fell in love with her, and we made you. I moved to Nibelheim from the main continent, a little suburb of Junon called Stereoheim. The next eleven months were… inarguably the happiest months of my life. I loved being a dad, and I loved your mother. We were going to be married after your first birthday, but me being the… foolish child I used to be… I decided that another tour with my band was more important than April."

"What band?" Cloud interrupted, wondering if the family sacrifice might have been well worth it.

"We were called Midwater Excellency."

"I've never even heard of you guys…" Cloud pointed out in disappointment.

"I know. We never actually got signed, and the tour I left your mother for never even panned out. I wanted to come back to you so badly, Cloud. But I was too… I felt like my failure would only be a real failure if I had to face your mother again. And the idea of having to eat crow in front of your grandfather was unbearable to me then."

"Grandpa? You didn't get along with him?" Cloud laughed a little. Nobody had gotten along with Cloud's grandfather during his long life. Joseph Strife had been one of the roughest, most foul-mouthed hooligans that Nibelheim had ever seen. He was a bitter old bastard, and the first person to ever call Cloud a faggot in his life.

But on the other hand, he would always hold Cloud on his knee and not allow him to get away from his bitter old whiskey kisses. Cloud remembered sitting in his lap and watching reruns of Matlock, sneaking sips of his beer and eating peanuts. Cloud loved his grandpa, especially because he always turned on the charm and treated the Strife women like they were princesses – and happy Strife women meant happy times in general.

He had been a good man at heart, but Cloud could definitely see why a failed boyfriend might never return to face that infamous wrath. His father sounded a little sheepish on the other line, "It wasn't just your granddad. I could have dealt with him… I wish… well. I should have just sucked it up."

"… So what did you do?" Cloud asked. "You had more kids really fast."

"I didn't cheat on you and your mom, Cloud. I went back home, went to university for business like my parents wanted me to. I met the women I ended up marrying at school on the first day of classes… I missed you so bad, Cloud. I missed having a baby around…"

"…So you made a new one?"

"I can't rationalize it," his father said, helplessness sneaking into his voice. "I can't make it right. I did horribly at my duties to you and your mom."

"…Were you a good dad to your other kids?" Cloud asked morbidly.

"I don't know," his father muttered. "I tried to be."

Cloud felt ill. His heart wanted justice, but there was just no getting it. Much like Cher, he wished he could turn back time but all they had was now. A shitty past and no guaranteed future. Just now.

And in the now, Cloud had been abandoned by his father, and almost immediately replaced. That sucked. But the man was asking for forgiveness.

If Cloud hadn't signed up for the army, if he hadn't met his beloved Sephiroth, or Cameron, or Zack, or any of the other people that made his world more enjoyable, he might have shriveled at the thought of forgiving this man. If he had been there the night that his father and stepbrothers had come by, unshowered, uncombed and reading music magazines in his room in his boxer shorts… if the universe would have been cruel enough to force him to face his father and his other sons like that… no future, a lousy high school career, no friends, and a lover who was a figment of his overactive imagination…

To face that kind of deep rejection with nothing in his corner? Cloud's lower lip shook grimly. He knew with all of his heart that Midgar and the Shin-Ra army had saved his life. Zack's friendship, Cam's acceptance, and Sephiroth's love had all saved his life. Literally.

With all of the happiness he'd been blessed with, the least he could do was forgive his own father. He clicked his tongue stud against his teeth. He didn't know how to begin.

His father murmured after a moment, "So sorry, Cloud."

Why, Cloud wanted to ask. Why, why, why. Why any of it? How?

"Okay," he said instead. "…Dad. It's okay."

"I didn't want you to be insulted by the money – "

"I wasn't, it was cool, it's helped a lot – "

"I'm glad, I thought it would help if you're in that city – "

"It's ridiculously expensive here – "

"Maybe I should come out and see you – "

"Yeah, you could do that – "

"Maybe I'll do that."

After they'd finished babbling at each other, Cloud decided he couldn't handle much more of the conversation. "Well, I'm gonna let you go. You can call me if you want."

"I will, I promise you that. And you can call me, too. Anytime you need to talk about anything, please call me. Please?"

Cloud wondered what scenario could possibly warrant him to need to call his father of all people, and couldn't think of a single one. But he made a promise to himself to at least try. Maybe when something manly happened, like a promotion or something.

"Okay," Cloud nodded.

"I'll make this up to you."

Cloud smiled softly. "…Okay."

"I can try at least," his father amended. "Night, son."

"Goodnight, dad."

Cloud wiggled every part of his body when he closed his phone. He laid back on Sephiroth's bed, jiggling his legs while stretching out his fingers and wobbling his arms. Once he'd successfully shaken the conversation out of him, he went to Sephiroth's bathroom mirror to check himself out.

Surprisingly enough, he'd not cried a single drop. His nose was a little red, though. Sephiroth had seen far worse, and so he decided he was presentable enough to reemerge into the living room.

Sephiroth didn't move, but his eyes drifted from the television screen. "…Everything alright?"

"Sure," Cloud smiled as he crossed the floor. He began to settle beside Sephiroth on the couch in their former comfortable position, but could feel those green eyes on him. Cloud finally stopped settling and looked back at him.

Sephiroth's face was blank. "Wanna talk?"

"Not really."

With the same perfectly blank expression, Sephiroth asked, "Want me to go down on you?"

Cloud laughed and shook his head. "Not right now."

Sephiroth kissed him. "Well, 'm here for you. Especially for the latter."

"In a little bit," Cloud sighed as their bodies tucked in close beneath the blanket. Sephiroth laid his head against Cloud's shoulder. He rested his cheek against the top of Sephiroth's head in return.

Eventually, Cloud would talk. They'd both talk late into the night. And after that, they would make love to each other.

But right then, sitting together and staring at a television screen seemed better than almost anything.

A/N

1 – Alright guys, the chapter after this one is the last one! Then we're moving on to part two! I'm so excited to move on with this story, introduce some new people and ideas that I've had for a long time.

2 – So tell me, should I just keep part two in this story file, or move it to a different one? Meh, might as well keep it all together. It always bugs me when bits and pieces are scattered all over the place. I'll just keep it all here so everything's together.

3 – I don't know if I thank the reviewers enough. There's certainly a lot of enthusiasm for this, and I'm glad. It's really helped me continue with things and it gives me something to look forward to, knowing what parts made you laugh or angry or sad. I take a long time to update, I know. I just worry about keeping everything at the same level of "goodness". It's an involved process – which is why you see so many typos and errors haha. It's not that my beta isn't great, it's that I'm constantly changing everything, trying to get the most bang for my wordbucks. I always say 'IT'S ALMOST DONE' and then end up not liking anything I've done and restarting and working on it for like 6 more months. Eh, it's fun though. That's all that matters, right?


	24. Propaganda

The middle of the day was always the worst for Cloud. The sugar high from lunch had worn off, his muscles burned in protest from morning classes, there were endless amounts of worksheets to complete, and there was still another whole half of the day to go. More classes, followed by another grueling round of physical activity. Then it was off to the gym with Cameron and their friends, homework, dinner, and perhaps a chat with Sephiroth before he fell asleep – often with the General still on the line.

Of course there had been fun things to poke breathing holes in the stress of cadet life, such as planning Sephiroth's twenty-third birthday party. Cloud approached Zack with the notion of throwing a party, who then employed the help of Julie who was only too glad to give it a woman's touch. Together, they had planned the perfect surprise party.

And even though Sephiroth probably knew exactly what he was walking into – why would Zack ask him to come tfo a remote part of the Shin-Ra building for a meeting on his birthday? He'd acted surprised just the same. Cloud had gathered all his favorite people and all his favorite food, and there were practical and fun gifts from everyone.

Zack got him a pair of ultra aerodynamic, green and black running shoes that apparently were the greatest thing he'd ever seen. Never had Cloud seen Sephiroth so worked up over an item of clothing, the man turned his nose up at priceless couture but apparently came in his pants from the latest Nikes. Genesis and Angeal had given Sephiroth the gift of time: Sephiroth would have Cloud's two week summer vacation in August off, free and clear of all work duties. Cloud was so happy that he kissed Genesis on the lips, who got a little excited by the idea and tried to slip him some tongue. Genesis was then slapped in the face by Rufus, who then gave Sephiroth a fancy pen since it was the sort of thing rich people liked to give other rich people.

Julie and Rhonda's children had also attended the party, and had apparently the twin boys had found the spare cash and motorf skills to give Sephiroth a very trendy new outfit. Cloud didn't know babies had such good taste in clothes. Other people gave Sephiroth odds and ends – a gift card to a generic store where he could buy what he wanted, or yummy treats they knew he liked.

Cloud's gift was more personal. He knew it was useless to buy Sephiroth anything – the man had a way of reimbursing Cloud for any expense he might have had on his behalf. It hurt Cloud's pride a little bit, but it eventually became clear that he shouldn't spend a dime on Sephiroth.

So, he created a "coupon book", where he had drawn stick figures of himself performing various tasks. Most of the coupons were for Sephiroth's choice of massage, cleaning, cooking, and personal assistant services. Things he often whined for Cloud to do, who was usually tired enough to complain about it. Sephiroth's feet weren't the funnest part of his body to massage after a long week, after all. Then there were two very discreet, but valuable coupons in the back of the book that simply read : One hour, whatever you want. Anything at all : 3

There was also a coupon for a free weekend, where Cloud had drawn a stick figure of Sephiroth reclining with tiny Z's coming from his head. Sephiroth had been confused, "What's this one for?"

"Well, whenever you're in town I always take up your weekends," Cloud explained. "This is just in case you have a weekend where you're home, but you just want time alone. I won't mind."

Sephiroth examined it closely, "It's cute. But I won't ever wanna use it."

"Never say never," Rhonda interjected.

Rufus chimed in, "Is the coupon transferable to other couples? I'd like to use it right now."

Julie and Genesis were highly offended.

The party was filled with laughter, as any good party should be. They were the Shin-Ra elite, but they were friends foremost. Angeal regaled the party with stories about Sephiroth's young Academy years as a squeaky-voiced shrimp, always tagging along and bothering himself and Genesis. Nurse Rhonda was glad to join in on the ribbing, but actually ended up making a very heartfelt toast to Sephiroth, her best friend.

Towards the end of the party and a little drunk, Sephiroth had pulled Cloud into his lap and kissed him. Not skipping a single ounce of intimacy despite the fact that they were in front of everyone he knew and respected.

When he let Cloud's lips go, he said, "You made this birthday awesome."

"I didn't do that much. Zack helped. Julie did most of it," Cloud blushed, taken aback slightly by Sephiroth's warmth and gentle tone.

"They aren't the ones who make me happy, though. That's you."

And later in Sephiroth's bedroom, Cloud worked hard to keep him very, very happy. No coupon required.

When the festivities were over, final exams began approaching rapidly. The days zoomed by, and Cloud was so overloaded with schoolwork and physical fatigue that he could have just died.

Even his weekends were overshadowed with responsibility. If he was lucky enough to spend it with Sephiroth he was still stuck with homework, and even the beautiful act of lovemaking was strenuous on Cloud's sore and overworked body. If he was without Sephiroth for a weekend, it might as well have been another school day since Cameron filled his time with training and studying.

This was completely unacceptable to Cloud Strife, a true slacker at heart. He was about to snap into a million pieces.

He needed exams to be over. He needed to get drunk. He needed to get fucked by the man he loved without his mind drifting to battle tactics or sword exercises. And God bless him, but he needed to get the hell away from Cameron Wedge for a while, before they got into an actual fistfight over who used the last of the toilet paper.

Cloud needed a fucking vacation!

Luckily, there was only one more month of school left. Then, he would have two solid weeks of blessed time away from the Academy. No schoolwork! No training! No alarm at five in the morning!

It was already planned out: The first week would consist of a road trip to Nibelheim, where Cloud and Sephiroth would help April pack their house and move to Junon, where she had a brand new condo and job teaching high schoolers waiting for her.

The second week would consist of a hotel room on the West shore. Jellyfish were migrating, and Sephiroth wanted to dive down to hang out with them. Cloud just wanted to see Sephiroth in a wetsuit – from the comfort of the warm sand, where he would soak up the sun in a Speedo and drink tequila until he forgot his own name.

Cloud couldn't wait. But the matter of Sephiroth meeting his family was a huge obstacle. His mother would behave, he knew. She'd become comfortable with the idea of Cloud and Sephiroth, and had even grown to like him. But the others in his family … They were uncontrollable. Cloud shuddered to think what social disgraces they were capable of.

The previous weekend, they were sitting together on Sephiroth's couch, waiting for a pizza delivery. They had to distract themselves from the temptation to fool around – nothing was worse than being interrupted by a pizza guy and having to answer the door with a boner. But with the way Sephiroth was staring at him with a smile playing on his soft, kissable lips, it was hard not to crawl forward and taste them.

So Cloud had held a piece of popcorn, "Open your mouth."

"No," Sephiroth shook his head and took a long drink of his beer. Cloud's influence over the past year was inherently a bad one, and this included choice of beverages. "You're just gonna make a fuckin' mess."

"You have a huge mouth! There's no way I could miss!" Cloud laughed, aiming to pitch.

"You're gonna choke me to death."

"Says the man who won't even let me know when he's about to come down my throat!" Cloud cried in outrage.

Sephiroth couldn't suppress a smug chuckle, "… Warnin' you takes some of the fun out of it, though."

"I know," Cloud agreed, then squinted one eye and prepared the popcorn's trajectory. Sephiroth finally gave in and opened up, and Cloud arched the little puff of popcorn right in. "Yes!"

"Do it again," Sephiroth said after chewing it.

Cloud had thrown most of the bowl of popcorn into Sephiroth's mouth before the delivery finally came. Sephiroth paid the man and brought the thin pizza boxes to the table, and began to dig in. He folded his slice and leaned back, flipping through the channels. With greasy food in his mouth, a remote in his hand, and a bottle of beer held between his thighs, Sephiroth created a perfect portrait of Midgarian bliss.

Cloud took a slice of his pizza and chewed on it for a moment before asking, "Are you nervous?"

"About what?" Sephiroth asked through his food.

"You're gonna meet my mom and my family next month."

"I'm not nervous about it," Sephiroth said, flipping his crust into the box and taking another piece.

"How can you not be nervous?"

"Well …" He shrugged before taking a big bite. "Maybe a little I guess."

"Don't be!" Cloud told him.

Sephiroth's eyebrows furrowed and he clearly had something to say, but his mouth was full of barely chewed pizza. He then took a long gulp of beer to wash it down before shouting, "Why the hell did you make me admit it, if you were just gonna tell me to not be?"

"Because I'm kind of nervous."

"You think I'm gonna embarrass you?"

"Of course not! I'm afraid my family will repulse you."

Sephiroth shook his head, and chewed until he could swallow and clear his mouth, "I don't care what they're like, they could be total bitches. I'ma still be perfect and charmin' and by the end of the weekend they're gonna wanna eat my shit."

"Seeeph!" Cloud laughed, "I love you to bits, but even I wouldn't eat your shit."

"I have a coupon that says otherwise."

"EWW!"

Sephiroth snorted around a new slice of pizza, "There's nothin' to worry about. We'll drive over there on Saturday and be outta there by Monday. We'll get her to Junon on Tuesday and get to the beach by Thursday. Not even a problem."

Cloud knew nothing was as simple as that, not when it came to his family.

And so there he was, sitting in another never-ending class and daydreaming, thinking of all the nightmare scenarios that could arise. He sighed in listless boredom when his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. For a text it was just a short buzz. But it was vibrating for much longer, and so Cloud pulled it out curiously to see who might be calling him.

One of the many pictures from his private archive of Sephiroth's goofy facial expressions was blinking on the screen. Sephiroth was calling him in the middle of a school day? Sephiroth never called him in the middle of a school day.

Cloud's face parted in a delighted smile, the first actual facial expression he'd made in hours, and he stuffed the phone in his pocket, "I need the bathroom pass!"

All eyes in the classroom turned to him as he scrambled up the aisle, nearly tripping over a backpack in his haste to retrieve the hall pass and evacuate the room. His teacher waved him on and continued to write on the white board and drone on.

Once he was in the hall, Cloud answered the call but didn't say anything until he was certain there were no patrols, teachers, or drill instructors lurking around, "Hello!"

"… I wanted to leave a message."

"Sorry!" Cloud laughed, and then imitated a robotic voice: "Please leave a message after the tone. Beeeeep."

"Very cute. Now you made me forget what I wanted to say," Sephiroth griped. "I gotta think about it."

Cloud giggled, just because his boyfriend had that effect on him. "Take your time remembering, you got me out of a boring class. What's up? And pleeease tell me it's what I hope it is!"

"I do have a semi, actually," Sephiroth remarked, actually sounding a little surprised at the realization. "But that's not why I called."

Cloud was more distracted by the semi comment, but found the maturity to inquire, "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to ask you somethin' …" Sephiroth cleared his throat. "I know you've got your finals comin' up soon, but do ya think you might be able to stay over tonight and miss school tomorrow?"

Cloud stopped walking. His beloved boyfriend, the ever so studious, punctual, and militant General of the Shin-Ra army … Was asking him to spend the night and skip school.

He had an urge to pinch himself, but quickly became suspicious, "Are you fucking with me right now? If you are, you're a cruel, cold man."

Sephiroth laughed, "No, I'm serious. I have to go somewhere tomorrow mornin', and I'm ... Well, I'm really nervous to be honest. I don't wanna go alone."

Cloud began to panic slightly, "You're not being sent away again are you?"

"No."

"Are you sick? You don't have like a surgery or something – "

"No, it's nothin' like that at all."

"Well, what is it?"

"Um," Sephiroth cleared his throat again. "Tomorrow mornin' I have a ..."

"Cavity filling?" Cloud guessed.

"… Photo shoot."

Cloud gasped. "What?"

"I have a photo shoot, okay?" Sephiroth sounded peeved. "It's for a new recruitment campaign, supposed to try an' get more Cadets to sign up this fall and next year. It's apparently gonna run in every magazine and newspaper on the fuckin' planet this whole year."

Cloud was incredibly excited, "Wow! And it's just going to be you in the ads? Wearing what?"

"I dunno, my uniform. Genesis is doin' some this weekend, and Angeal already did his. So … Can you take a day off and come with me?" Sephiroth asked. "But don't come if you've got somethin' important happening."

"Screw everything else, of course I'll come with you! I don't understand why you're nervous though, you know you're gorgeous."

Sephiroth groaned. "I've been avoidin' this type of PR since I got this position."

"I know you've been avoiding it!" Cloud growled. "Do you know how much time I spent in high school trying to hunt down a poster or a picture of you? I scoured newspapers almost everyday!"

"I forget sometimes how pathetic you were."

"Still am," Cloud corrected with an adoring grin, "I'm your biggest fan. Do you mind?"

"I guess I got lucky that my biggest fan turned out to have such a nice ass," Sephiroth flirted. "But I don't want this to be some kinda invitation to not-so-sexy people to approach me. I get enough of that as it is."

"Poor you.i," Cloud comforted sarcastically. "I'm sure nothing will change in your social life, Seph. You're still big, bad and scary. And so am I, I'll protect you."

"Of course. I trust you to keep the wierdos in check."

"Oh, don't worry ..." Cloud nodded earnestly, envisioning himself shielding Sephiroth with a spray of bullets from a flesh hungry, zombie-esque horde of admirers.

"Go back to class, have a good day. Pack your shit and be ready around five."

What an unexpected surprise! Cloud wanted to perform a cartwheel! He thanked the universe in all its infinite randomness, to bless him with such good fortune on an otherwise boring Tuesday. "I can't wait to see you and hug you and kiss you! Tell me something sexy to get me through the rest of this day!"

"Sexy?" Sephiroth snorted. "What makes you think you're gettin' lucky tonight? We're gonna have to get up early, and I need all the beauty rest I can get."

Cloud cupped his mouth and whispered into his phone. "You can just lay back and rest then ... I'll do all the work for you."

"Remember how I had a semi?" Sephiroth smiled, and it was audible even over the phone. "Not a semi anymore ..."

"Oh?" Cloud gushed.

"You're gettin' me solid over here."

"Mm," Cloud hummed, licking his lips. "How solid?"

"Back to class, Cloud."

"Wait!" He implored desperately. "Do you have a ruler handy?"

Sephiroth then hung up on him.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next morning, Sephiroth and Cloud were called at four AM with the unhappy news that their lift to the photo studio was already waiting outside.

It was a grumpy start to the day. They both washed their faces, brushed their teeth, and threw clothes on with little communication beyond grunting at each other.

Cloud had made good on his threat to do all the work for Sephiroth the night before. In his fervor to put on a good show, he was left with aching thighs, a sore ass, and an overly worked lower stomach. His entire body burned as he descended the stairs of Sephiroth's apartment complex. He was just grateful that he could probably get away with sitting most of the day, preferably unconscious.

Once they were in the car and on their way to the studio, Sephiroth curled up beside Cloud and laid his head on his shoulder. Almost immediately, he was dozing and making those innocent sleeping noises in Cloud's ear. He relaxed against Sephiroth with a smile and let himself doze off as well.

The studio didn't look like much from the outside, but inside it was bustling with a photography team that was impatient with everyone and everything. There was a makeshift hair and makeup area, a clothes rack full of different uniforms, and several sets. One resembled a training field, while another was a mountaintop with a smoldering red sunset in the background sky, and another looked like some bizarre, Hollywood vision of a smoking battlefield.

Cloud was taking in his surroundings when the photographer and the art director greeted them.

The art director was a thin, bald faggot with sunglasses on inside. He gave Sephiroth a limp handshake before flouncing to put more touches on the sets and lighting, all fluttering hands and waving arms. Cloud inwardly grimaced, hoping to be a little more distinguished when he himself became an aging homosexual. Not likely. At least he wouldn't ever be bald, though.

The photographer was a heavy, middle aged woman with frizzy red hair and purple lipstick, and she bellowed orders like she was leading a pack of wild dogs through the Northern tundra. Sephiroth had shown up in jeans and a loose t-shirt, and the photographer was apparently displeased with his cavalier appearance.

"Get him into hair and makeup!" She bellowed. "Then into wardrobe! I want him camera ready in twenty minutes!"

"I'm not wearin' any makeup," Sephiroth declared, but was already being pulled at by a malnourished young woman. Sephiroth apparently suffered an affliction that caused him to bend to the whims of tiny people, so he was forced to follow. The waspy young woman urged him into a chair and immediately began to spackle his perfect skin with concealer.

Cloud watched in fascination as Sephiroth's usual dark under eye circles disappeared, and was replaced with flattering maroon tinted eye shadow. It blended seamlessly into his skin, and made his green eyes look even more piercing than usual.

"I'm gonna look like a tranny," Sephiroth complained, but the young lady silenced him by patting his lips with clear gloss.

"You won't in pictures," She promised him. "We're just evening up your skin tone and playing up your features. We don't want a repeat of the TimeWeek cover, do we?"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes as she began to use light plum eyeliner pencil around them, "I didn't look that bad ..."

She began to apply mascara to his ludicrously long lashes, "I could have grated cheese on your chapped lips. We're gonna make you pretty, this time."

A young, fashionable man with glasses began to roughly brush Sephiroth's hair while running a flat iron through it, root to tip. Cloud didn't know how, but he could tell this man was straight. Some people were just born with a passion for fashion, regardless of sexual orientation.

The straight hairdresser shook his head in disapproval. "We've got a split end situation, here. I'm gonna trim a little."

Sephiroth was helpless. He turned his eyes to Cloud, and they shared a long gaze that ended with Cloud giggling and Sephiroth's face filled with embarrassed color.

"What the hell?" The tiny makeup artist balked when his perfect skin began to break out in a reddened flush. "Stop that!"

"I can't help it," Sephiroth chuckled and his face became even rosier.

She sighed loudly and began to fan his face with a nearby fashion magazine, "Try to calm down, okay?"

Sephiroth refused to look at Cloud again, and was forced to look at himself in the mirror. He watched the hair stylist begin to almost haphazardly trim his split ends and work in leave in conditioner. He watched the makeup girl brush tinted concealer onto his cheeks.

The hair stylist tsked as he went about the heavy task of cutting the four and a half foot length of Sephiroth's tresses. "General Sir, you've got to try to stop sitting and sleeping on your hair. You're breaking it in half in some places. I'm warning you, either braid it or put it up when you're at home and when you sleep."

"Braids look stupid. And do you know how annoyin' it is to try and put it up all the time?" Sephiroth grumbled, crossing his arms like a diva.

"You want a bowl cut instead?" The hairdresser threatened.

"You wanna find out what my foot feels like up your ass?" Sephiroth retorted darkly. "Get off my case."

Cloud couldn't stop snickering. The photographer came by to survey the work being done on her subject, and nodded sagely. "He looks good, he's ready."

The assistants put on finishing touches before allowing Sephiroth to stand up. He was then guided to the wardrobe area, was given a new uniform and stepped behind a folding wall to change.

The photographer began to adjust the settings on her camera, then stopped to squint at Cloud, "Who the hell are you and what are you supposed to be doing right now?"

Cloud cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted his response. "General Sephiroth's moral support!"

"Fine, but stay out of the way!" She barked.

And so Cloud obeyed and stayed back, watching with a smile as Sephiroth reappeared and stood nervously in front of the entire crew. "What do want me to do?"

The art director ushered him to the training field set, where most of the shoot was going to take place. "Make everyone in this room want to join the Shin-Ra army."

Sephiroth spent the next several hours doing just that. Cloud watched him with a mixture of possessive pride and pure awe of just how graceful, powerful and inspiring his lover could be. His natural stance, weight rested on one knee, hands at his sides, and staring down the barrel of the camera … It was perfect. Cloud watched the images appear on the photographer's computer screen and nearly drooled.

Then, the studio had him do every move from the Big Book Of Gorgeous Male Model Poses. Perfection was constantly improved upon time and time again. Sephiroth was unable to take an unflattering photograph, every single picture was breathtaking. Cloud was so excited to see them in print, and for Sephiroth to finally gain recognition for more than being a military leader with a small cult following of obsessed fans. He was the most beautiful man on the planet.

Cloud began to daydream about the doors this ad campaign might open for Sephiroth. He'd accept a bowl cut from the straight stylist just to see Sephiroth in a Fruit of the Loom underwear campaign.

The photographer and art director agreed that that was enough on the field set. It was back into makeup for Sephiroth, and this time she caked his face and any exposed areas of skin with "dirt". Then she decided to splatter red paint onto him – and Sephiroth outright refused to be photographed wearing anything resembling blood.

"This is propaganda, Sephiroth," the photographer argued. "It's what impassions people to risk their life fighting for one army over another. This is raw, and real. This is what war is."

"I'm well aware of the concept of propaganda, and I know exactly what war is," He argued back without his accent, wiping the fake blood off his face with a stolen tissue. "But what's raw and real is the fact that I'm a leader. A leader who would use fear to spike recruitment numbers is morally repugnant."

"It's not fear, Sephiroth – "

"Whose blood is this supposed to represent?" He asked calmly. "You can make me dirty if you want – I usually am. Roll me in mud if you want to. But you won't win this blood issue. There are better things I could be doing today."

Nobody spoke for a moment, until the art director waved his finger in Sephiroth's direction, "Can you hold that thought in your head during the next round of shots? Because I am just loving your look right now."

"You heard him! Get the blood off of him! What is this, a cheap zombie movie? Do your job!" The photographer shouted at the makeup girl, who gave Sephiroth a respectful nod.

Cloud put his elbows on Sephiroth's chair and quietly whispered to him, "I'm telling."

"You're tellin' what?" He responded, speaking from the corner of his mouth to not disrupt the makeup girl's work.

"Anyone who'll listen ... That you're wonderful," Cloud told him, pressing a kiss to the side of his head before getting out of the way.

The makeup girl was less than pleased, "You made him red again! Get lost!"

Over the course of the next hour, Sephiroth was dirty on top of a mountain. Cloud thought he'd never get tired of looking at him. The man was a true muse, and Cloud snuck a few photos on his cell phone when he thought the photographer wasn't looking.

She noticed, though. "Hey blondie. Come over here."

Cloud gulped, hoping he wasn't about to be kicked out due to some sort of obscure copyright law. Of course, he had joint custody of Sephiroth's body, so he should be able to snap all the pictures he wanted to of it! And so he marched up to the photographer with confidence. "Problem?"

"No, there's not a problem, smartass. I just wanna ask you a couple questions," She continued to snap Sephiroth's picture occasionally. "You're his boyfriend, right? The Cadet?"

"Yeah," Cloud nodded.

"Did he make you wanna join up?"

"Of course," Cloud told her truthfully. It wasn't that uncommon, Sephiroth was a regular hero to everyone.

"Tell us then," the art director pulled him close. "What do you think would be truly inspiring? An iconic image that will echo through the ages, like Uncle Sam, like Hitler, like Ghandi..."

Cloud blurted what he'd been thinking all morning: "Take off his damn coat."

Sephiroth looked like he might have hesitated, but assistants flew forward to help him shuck off the iron shoulder pads and remove his coat. The makeup girl came running with more dirt, and practically threw it at him in order to accommodate the photographer's latest burst of inspiration.

"Genius," The art director declared. Then, consulted Cloud again. "What else?"

"Maybe… get him into a regular First Class SOLDIER uniform!" Cloud grinned, hopping a little in excitement.

Three minutes, five wardrobe assistants and a baby wipe later, Sephiroth was fresh and clean in the linen blues of the First Class. Cloud approved, "Now have him clean his sword!"

It felt like he was playing with a life-size doll of his beloved. Anything he wanted him to do, Sephiroth did. He cleaned his sword for the camera. He swung it around without a shirt on, only those loose, starchy blue fatigues and thick leather suspenders. Then staring at the camera with hair cascading over one shoulder. Then he had him back in full uniform, only to take it off piece by piece ... Slowly.

He had Sephiroth show the camera about his natural fire wielding talents. He made fire with his fingers, and larger ones in the palms of his hands, until the smoke alarm went off, that is. The entire studio played dumb when the firefighters arrived, and they chalked it up to a malfunction.

Cloud was having a grand time, until the photographer announced that she was on her final photograph. "Last one, General Sephiroth. Make it count."

Sephiroth enthusiastically flipped her off with both hands. The photo shoot was complete, and everyone applauded, none louder or more joyously than Cloud. Sephiroth's faced enflamed, and he fled into the wardrobe area to change.

Before she allowed them to leave, the photographer approached Sephiroth to thank him. "Extremely inspirational, you're a true professional. We've got some outstanding photographs, I know the President will be pleased."

"Everyone's gonna see this," Sephiroth told her, staring her in the eyes. "Make it classy."

"Impossible to do otherwise!" The art director cried, shaking the General's hand a final time.

Sephiroth and Cloud left the studio every bit as tired as they'd arrived, and didn't speak on the ride home. Their hands loosely clasped in the center of the seat, and one of Cloud's thumbs moved across Sephiroth's knuckles, the only sign that he hadn't fallen asleep in the car.

When they arrived back at Sephiroth's loft, Cloud pulled him by the hand to his bedroom.

Sephiroth followed, playing dumb with a grin, "Oh, you want a nap?"

"Not exactly," Cloud purred, and pushed his boyfriend onto the bed. Sephiroth fell backwards from the tiny amount of pressure that Cloud administered and bounced on the mattress. He felt his body already reacting in excitement when his small lover smoothly followed, laying on top of him and immediately pushing kisses across his mouth.

The perfect mood for making love wasn't planned, and it couldn't be. Sometimes it was promised but not delivered, and sometimes it wasn't as Earth shattering as usual. There was never a particular moment in which they knew they'd crossed the line from a loving, extended embrace into foreplay territory. It just got to a point where one would wait and see how far the other would go.

Another kiss, another touch, the loss of another article of clothing. It was like hypnotism, they lost track of time, of themselves, but never lost track of each other. They knew where every limb was placed, every finger as it brushed over damp skin, every heartbeat and intake of air.

Through all the kisses and shifting on the mattress, Cloud had found a place between Sephiroth's thighs. He sat up on his knees, breaking the spell for a moment to pull down Sephiroth's jeans. They were tight, and clung to Sephiroth's creamy skin, pulling it away from the muscle, almost making him look like a melting ice cream treat.

Cloud smiled at that thought and licked along his exposed skin. It tasted of salt and smelled of sugar, and mixed together in Cloud's senses like an exotic dessert. His lover tasted wonderful, every inch of him.

He stopped at Sephiroth's lips, through with simply tasting and ready for full on devouring, "… You're so gorgeous."

"Thanks," Sephiroth muttered, kissing Cloud back and further enjoying what had become a day of nonstop attention. Not that he drew away from the spotlight, it just wasn't always shining on him in bed. He was usually the photographer, as it were, instead of the subject.

But Cloud was making him the subject that night. It was … Unusual. It made Sephiroth wonder how far Cloud would take it. So, he remained on his back and passive, not wanting to disrupt the course that Cloud was setting for them. It was easy to lose himself in Cloud's lips, the teenager kissed beautifully under the briefest of circumstances, but in extended sessions he became an artist with his mouth. His tongue moved gently but insistently, thrusting and running along Sephiroth's sharp teeth.

Moments expanded outwards while their bodies talked, always full of new things to say to each other. Legs moved against each other. Groins bumped together. Hands felt everything they could reach.

Cloud's hands were especially restless. One cradled the back of Sephiroth's skull while he kissed him, massaging circles into his scalp and mixing with his glossy hair. The other hand brushed downwards.

Cloud touched Sephiroth's cock as a greeting, and then his long fingers curled beneath his tight balls to what waited beneath. With a groan against his lips, Cloud rubbed Sephiroth's opening. His fingertips tickled with the anticipation of sinking inside.

Cloud broke their kiss, panting down at Sephiroth. He brought his fingers to Sephiroth's lips, sucking in air at the shapes they made around them.

Then Sephiroth let them go with a pop, "Baby … Would you mind getting … Ya know? The stuff."

Cloud stared at him dumbly. "Lube?"

"I'll need it … Right?"

Cloud realized what Sephiroth was asking. Sephiroth was asking for lube. Sephiroth was acknowledging this. This was not going to be a just a finger fuck. Sephiroth was going to let him …

Cloud shook his head and his thoughts spilled out of his mouth, "Yeah, you'll need that if we're going to do that. You do need that. I'm so stupid, I'm not thinking! I'm sorry! One second!"

Sephiroth waited with highly amused patience while Cloud scrambled on his knees over to the table, searching noisily for lube. None was to be found there. How many times had Sephiroth reached blindly into this drawer and always come back with the damn lube? It should have taken microseconds.

The man was devious, he must have planned ahead. Where the hell could it be?

Then Cloud remembered that it probably had been taken out into the living room, and there was perhaps another tube abandoned in the bathroom.

He placed several nervous, pleading kisses on Sephiroth's lips, "Be right back! Don't move!"

Then Cloud literally sprinted full speed to the bathroom. Running into the sink, he cursed and noisily searching through drawers until he found what he was looking for in the bathtub, almost completely hidden among shampoo bottles and body wash. He knocked over almost everything, and grasped the tube with trembling fingers.

He came back to bed much more slowly than he'd left it. Sephiroth was lying there waiting for him with his hands laced behind his head. His limbs seemed to go on forever, pure perfection. He turned his head slowly to look at Cloud, and his face remained a porcelain vision of tranquil beauty.

"Found it …" Cloud nearly whispered in reverence, putting a knee onto the bed.

"Mm," Was all Sephiroth said. He didn't want to react too much, it was hysterically funny to see what Cloud would do when unprovoked, and how worked up he could make himself. He was content to just watch for the time being.

Cloud crawled up onto the bed like a nervous puppy. "So … You said something about wanting me to use this ... On you?"

"Uh huh," Sephiroth agreed. Then, only because he couldn't help himself, "I'm sure you know what to do."

Cloud's breath stopped, and he stuttered for a moment before collecting himself. "Yeah, just ... Stop me if I go too far."

"M'kay."

Cloud gently moved back between Sephiroth's legs, and quickly began to kiss him again, to conjure up their previous passion – not only for Sephiroth's seduction, but to build his own anticipation, his need, and his confidence. He kissed Sephiroth, his cheeks, his chin, his neck. He realized that Sephiroth didn't prefer to be bitten, and responded much more to ghostly, ticklish kisses on his throat and behind his ears. Cloud whispered kisses across these secret areas until the General finally gave in to squirming slightly beneath him.

"Love you," Cloud whispered, letting his breath fan across Sephiroth's ear. The General squirmed again, and Cloud was satisfied.

He moved down to worship Sephiroth's ridiculous abs with his tongue, as he so often did. He kept one hand on the mattress to steady himself, while the other worked alone to uncap the Pleasureglide.

He managed to get it onto his fingers, and paused in kissing Sephiroth's belly button to watch. Curious blue eyes widened just a bit as his middle finger easily slid inside his beloved. He looked up to Sephiroth's face, and was greeted with a relaxed expression, like a lazy feline waiting to see what would happen next, but not too particularly bothered by the outcome either way.

They'd played like this before. Sephiroth would never squeak, claw or tremble from prostate stimulation the way that Cloud did. Their bodies were just built differently. But it was fun though, and the General seemed to enjoy it in his own way.

Regardless of Sephiroth insisting that he liked it, the lack of intense reaction made Cloud worry that he was bad at giving this sort of pleasure … But if he was bad, Sephiroth surely put up with it well. So Cloud curled his fingers and moved them knowingly. Sephiroth's breathing quickened just a little. He wasn't jumping around the mattress like it was on fire, but he clearly wasn't bored.

In a continued effort to not be boring, Cloud pulled his middle finger out and replaced it with three.

That got a slightly larger reaction. Sephiroth's breathing hitched and he let out a quiet, "Fuck."

Cloud spread out his fingers and noticed an almost inaudible hitch on Sephiroth's breath.

Cloud bent his neck and put his open mouth against the underside of Sephiroth's cock. He sucked at the thick vein, teasing blood to the surface of the skin and leaving a wet, reddened path up to the head. He worked his fingers inside Sephiroth while suckling gently.

Sephiroth's hips began to move slightly, pushing up into Cloud's touch in a slow, relaxed rhythm. He liked when lovemaking was like this; No need to rush, no need to worry about time, place or obligations. It wasn't so much about the end result. Sephiroth was letting him play, and it was nice.

The only pressure lied in Cloud's desire to make Sephiroth feel every level of heaven and hell all at once. Sephiroth could do it to him, and he could do it even if he didn't even try that hard. Cloud needed to know that he could return the favor. He wanted to be good, too. He wanted Sephiroth to want him.

And there was the selfish curiosity of not knowing what it was like on the other end of that spectrum of feeling. He couldn't imagine what it must have felt like to sink into another person's body. He hungered to know, and to be welcomed and craved in that regard.

It seemed to Cloud, that the act of topping Sephiroth was going to be a very big test. If he was … Bad … Would they no longer be equals? If this one chance was blown, would this option of lovemaking be forbidden, or worse, seen as a dreaded chore by Sephiroth? Maybe it would lead Sephiroth to question whether he could really be with someone who wasn't versatile enough to please him both ways. Maybe he needed someone else … Maybe Cloud wasn't man enough …

No way! Cloud Strife was not a one-trick pony! He focused on his task, varying between feather light touches and heavier presses of his fingers. Even if he managed to fuck this up, he'd go down in flames knowing he'd done everything he could do to make Sephiroth feel good.

Cloud didn't realize it yet, but when it came to pleasure, Sephiroth was a very simple creature. He'd lived two-thirds of his life with almost no warm human contact. It took him time to even become comfortable with touching, but his friends had helped him conquer that difficulty, and Cloud had pushed him the rest of the way into a total contact addict. He loved the way Cloud touched him, whether it was a well-placed caress, or just a fleeting brush of his skin. On their first date, those brief, fleeting touches would forever rank high on the most erotic moments of his life.

From Sephiroth's perspective, his lover's fingers were up his ass and it felt good. His hot mouth was on his cock, and that felt good, too. All was right with the world, there were no politics associated with lovemaking. He was going to get fucked by Cloud, and it was probably going to be fun.

With that thought, he got a little antsy. He gave Cloud a tiny tug on his hair, "You gonna make me wait all day?"

Cloud blushed, knowing full well that he was beating around the bush. With every passing second, his gusto seemed to be waning. "… I'm not sure, anymore."

"C'mon," Sephiroth urged kindly, not wanting his teasing to shatter Cloud's confidence.

Cloud shook his head, "If you don't want to, we don't have to do this."

"If I don't want to?" Sephiroth wondered up at him. "When did I say I didn't want to?"

"You didn't," Cloud admitted. "But I could understand if you wouldn't want to."

"Is there a reason why I wouldn't want you?"

"Lots of reasons. I don't know what I'm doing, for one."

Sephiroth laughed, and pulled Cloud down into a hug. "Will you relax? I didn't know what I was doin' the first time, either."

"Yes you did," Cloud mumbled against his chest. "You were perfect."

"And I'm sure you'll be perfect at it, too," Sephiroth assured him. "… I wanna do this."

"Really?" Cloud asked, lifting his head.

"… Are you tryin' to make me beg?" Sephiroth asked with a suspicious grin.

Cloud blushed brightly. "No! It's not that – "

"Please, Cloud!" Sephiroth wailed, throwing his arms over his head and tossing his head back dramatically. He spoke in a withering, girlish falsetto, "Take me, please! I need you, you big sexy stud!"

Cloud laughed, "You're so stupid!"

"You're stupid. You're buildin' it up like it's a big deal. It's not hard, just … Stick it in and move around."

"You won't laugh if I'm bad, will you?" Cloud fretted. "I mean … I'm gonna look like a Chihuahua humping a Great Dane."

"I like Chihuahuas, though," Sephiroth smiled. "They're hot."

"So … Should I …?" Cloud just needed one last bit of encouragement, and looked into Sephiroth's eyes to implore him for it.

"Do me, already."

Cloud giggled, and moved up to his knees. He gently began to arrange Sephiroth's legs, trying to get the long, never ending limbs out of the way. He had no idea where to put them, and so settled for around his hips, feeling ridiculous. Those legs could have snapped him in half.

He didn't think about that, and instead put his hands under Sephiroth's ass and lifted him slightly. He was way too heavy to hold up, and Cloud seemed to be at a loss for what to do.

He already wanted to give up.

"My legs are too long, I'm like a horse or somethin'," Sephiroth admitted, trying to lighten the mood. He pulled back his knees to his chest, easily bending himself nearly in half without any effort, "Is that better?"

Cloud slowly nodded, marveling at the sight of Sephiroth … Presenting. For him. Before he could censor his mouth, he blurted, "I love your legs. I love your whole body."

"It loves you back," Sephiroth replied without skipping a beat.

"I just mean to say that it's amazing. So like, flexible. And just … Perfect – "

Sephiroth finally lost patience, "I don't want to hear another word until your cock is in me, awright?"

Cloud opened his mouth to confirm, but then closed it and nodded mutely. He knew he was stalling but he couldn't shake off his nerves. Sephiroth was spread open for him like a gorgeously presented buffet of sexiness. Not a single centimeter of his body wasn't beautiful, powerful, and completely up for grabs.

Cloud leaned down over him, positioning himself carefully. The head of his cock was pressed against Sephiroth's …

He suddenly reached out and seized the lube, and yanked off the cap.

"Not too much," Sephiroth told him. "Feels better with less, than more."

"Oh," Cloud gulped. He only used a small drop, and it spread easily over the head of his cock. He realigned their bodies, poised to enter.

He wanted to watch it go in, but he also wanted to watch Sephiroth's face for any sign of discomfort … Or any other lovely expression that might cross it. He decided he could watch himself go in anytime, and kept his eyes trained on Sephiroth's.

They were brightly lit and amused, peering up at him under dark lashes. Cloud smiled shyly down at him and began to carefully move his hips forward. When he felt himself actually begin to sink into tight heat, he couldn't help but glance down to where his cock was boldly going where no man had gone before.

It was jarring how hot it was inside of Sephiroth. Not just warm, but hot.

It was nothing like his fist, or even a mouth … And secretly, Cloud never fully understood what Sephiroth meant when he referred to him as tight. Sure, he figured it meant that he was small and Sephiroth was big, so it was a tight fit in a harsh sort of sense. Sephiroth would grit the observation out with grinding teeth, and Cloud almost wondered if 'tight' was an inconvenience.

But 'tight' was the opposite of harsh. It was soft, almost silky, and contracted with Sephiroth's breathing, squeezing a little bit before relaxing and letting Cloud push in deeper.

He felt so close to Sephiroth. To be inside someone he loved more than anything was … It was emotional. It was amazing.

Sephiroth made a small sound, and Cloud looked back up. His plump lips were parted, the edge of one of his razor sharp teeth had the bottom one trapped. Cloud swallowed and moved closer, inching farther inside.

He tried to imagine what Sephiroth was feeling, but couldn't get past what he himself was feeling. He didn't want to be the sort of man who'd cry during sex, but he couldn't help but sniff a bit as his vision wavered. "Shit," Sephiroth muttered when he saw a tear streak down Cloud's cheek. "What?"

Cloud shook his head. "Nothing. I just love you."

Sephiroth's expression softened. He was quiet for a moment before he replied, "I love you, too."

Cloud pushed in until he met Sephiroth's hips. He put his hands on the mattress and leaned down. He had to stretch his neck out to reach Sephiroth's lips, but he was determined to kiss him. They met with their mouths already open, tongues ready to taste and feel one another.

With his hands on the bed and his mouth against Sephiroth's, Cloud began to thrust gently between Sephiroth's legs.

Then he realized he hadn't even asked if Sephiroth was ready, yet! "Oh God, I'm sorry, are you – "

"You're all good, baby," Sephiroth told him between kisses. He made deep, rhythmic sounds in his throat in time with the gentle pushing. He stroked Cloud's hair, taking two handfuls of it. "You can gimme more."

Cloud gasped a little as Sephiroth's legs moved. One stayed between them while the other moved down to pull at his hips, urging him in deeper. He shivered slightly as he began to move with purpose, and rolled his hips in search of the perfect angle to make Sephiroth fully enjoy their first time in this way.

"Sit up on your knees," Sephiroth guided him. "You're long, you gotta work to angle it up."

Cloud obeyed his lover's suggestion, trying to focus on bringing him pleasure and not reveling in his own … But his blue eyes rolled a little bit as he sat up and saw what exactly was going on. Sephiroth was so beautiful, the most flawless man he'd ever laid eyes on, everything Cloud ever wanted to be ... And he was moving his hips, squeezing him, taking in as much of Cloud's cock as he could get.

Cloud surged against him, and it cause the General to gasp in shock. "Mn! …Yeah."

Encouraged, Cloud took Sephiroth's leg and used it to urge him onto his side. Sephiroth nodded and followed, allowing Cloud to drape one leg over his shoulder and straddle the other. This was he was able to get deeper, to put more power behind it. He hugged Sephiroth's leg, pressed a kiss against his knee as he began to rock his hips.

Cloud looked down, and groaned at the sight of Sephiroth's perfect body below him. Sephiroth's cock was rock hard and twitching slightly. Cloud wondered if it felt left out, and resolved to pay plenty of attention to it … But at the moment he was a bit too consumed with the rest of Sephiroth.

Cloud panted, "You … like it?"

Sephiroth licked the side of his mouth. "Don't sound surprised."

"I just …" Cloud continued rocking his hips, despite his verbal hesitance. "Just need … I wanna hear you say it."

"I fuckin' love it," Sephiroth growled with a smile. "I couldn't wait for you to shove that fuckin' cock in me."

Cloud gasped. "Why didn't you tell me sooner!"

"I wanted it to be your idea."

Cloud could accept that. He let one of his hands wander down Sephiroth's thigh, enjoying the soft skin that stretched over taut muscle. His thighs were the fleshiest part of Sephiroth's body, and Cloud squeezed, causing the General to lurch in ticklishness beneath him.

It also caused him to tighten extraordinarily, so much that Cloud squeaked loudly in a mixture of pleasure and pain.

Sephiroth laughed, and that just added to the tightness in toe-curling waves. "Don't tickle if you can't take the consequences."

Cloud winced, "I won't."

He left Sephiroth's thigh alone and moved his hand down to his main goal. Sephiroth was hard, and his balls bounced just slightly as Cloud began to move again. He ran his fingers over them, lifting them to let them drop again. Then he wrapped his fingers around Sephiroth's thick cock, pulling firmly at it.

"Are you close?" Cloud whispered, not wanting to spoil the mood with rushing, but he also didn't want to overdo it their first time.

"… It's been like five minutes."

Oh no! Cloud's eyes widened and he gawked at the digital clock next to the bed. Cloud could already feel his balls tightening and his lower stomach lurching with the aching need for release. He closed his eyes resolutely. Very carefully, he let go of Sephiroth's hardness and focusing on anything but him.

The slick heat squeezing his cock was impossible to ignore, however. With closed eyes, he was only left to fantasize about all the different ways he could fuck Sephiroth. Like on his hands and knees, for instance …

Cloud could feel his cock weeping precome. He didn't blame it one bit.

He opened his eyes and looked at Sephiroth, who was up on his elbows and watching Cloud move between his legs. His teeth were chewing his bottom lip again, almost sneering as he moved his hips with Cloud's. He looked up, and his dark eyelashes fluttered.

"Baby … You look fuckin' sexy right now," He purred. "Your body's gettin' so tight."

Cloud yanked himself out of Sephiroth and squeezed it, manhandling his package to stave off an abrupt orgasm. "Ugh! … Oh shit … Don't say 'tight'…"

Sephiroth chuckled and let his head fall back on the mattress. "This is fun!"

Cloud leaned down to kiss his stomach, letting himself cool off a bit. "Mm … It is fun."

Sephiroth propped up on an elbow. "Ya know, there's somethin' I never told you before …"

Cloud continued to kiss and lick at his lover's abs. "Hm?"

"I have a secret weapon against comin' too early. I use it sometimes when I think I'm gonna blow. Usually I hafta use it when you get on top … Watchin' you ride fuckin' kills me every time," Sephiroth trailed off fondly. "You might like my trick."

Cloud looked up, "What is it? Thinking about baseball scores or girls?"

Sephiroth shook his head, "Nah. I don't even think that'd work, anyways. The trick is … Slow."

"Slow?" Cloud tilted his head. "Like, move slowly?"

"Slow," Sephiroth repeated. "I cast it on myself just a little bit, center it on my lower body. Works like a charm, I still feel everythin' but my body works, well, slower."

Cloud laughed merrily, "Are you telling me you actually injure yourself in order to not come too soon?"

"Sure, it's worth it!" Sephiroth nodded happily. "Angeal told me about it."

Cloud laughed, "Okay, it's worth a try. Cast it on me."

"'Kay," Sephiroth said.

"It doesn't hurt, does it?" Cloud asked quickly, biting his lip.

"Nope," Sephiroth assured him. He wiggled his fingers slightly and Cloud waited for some sort of flash of light or any internal signal that his body was suffering a magic attack. Sephiroth smiled, "Try to move."

"… I am trying," Cloud blurted. He was trying to move up to his knees, but couldn't. His arms and hands were fine, and he could speak … But from the waist down, he wasn't exactly immobile, but very close to it. It was somewhat frightening, but also a little amusing.

Sephiroth helped him, and gently lowered him onto his back.

Cloud's eyes were wide as he watched the statuesque figure of General Sephiroth looming over him. Straddling him. Seeing the tightly wound muscles in his thighs alone from this angle alone made Cloud want to come. But everything else … The view was spectacular. His abs, his chest, his burning eyes. His hair, his perfect, fat cock pulsing between his legs.

Then, this other worldly creature reached behind himself, took Cloud's meager, mortal cock, and began to lower himself onto it.

Cloud squeaked, "Wh-what are you doing?"

Sephiroth laughed, "You can't move with Slow, someone's gotta do the work … Since you did last night, I don't mind at all."

"You're fucking amazing," Cloud blurted, glad that he could at least use his hands. He moved them to Sephiroth's thighs while perfect heat plunged down around him.

Sephiroth didn't seem bothered by their difference in size. He navigated Cloud's body easily enough, graceful in his placement of his limbs, utterly in control on his maiden voyage.

Since Cloud was no longer in danger of blowing his load, he smiled up at him. He liked to engage his lover in dirty talk, if only to see what the man would say. There was no telling what would come out of Sephiroth's mouth, especially during sex.

Cloud reached up to run his hands over Sephiroth's chest, admiring his physique while the man began to steadily lift and lower himself. It didn't qualify as a bounce, but it was close. Cloud smiled, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Whhhat?" Sephiroth gritted out, putting his hands on either side of Cloud's head. He pressed his weight on them and used his hips to work himself.

Cloud almost forgot what he wanted to ask. Once he'd regained his ability to speak, he asked, "I was wondering. You have the Boyfriend here … Do you ever … Use him?"

"Sure," Sephiroth told him, only slightly distracted as his ass met Cloud's thighs. He gently rocked his hips, bouncing in slow, smooth motions. "All the time."

"Do I feel as good?" Cloud asked, using his fingertips to ghost up and down Sephiroth's thighs.

"You feel so damn cute," Sephiroth sighed, his words slightly elongated.

That wasn't what he was expecting at all! Cloud frowned slightly, "Cute?"

Sephiroth nodded, apparently a little distracted. After a moment of positioning his hips, he continued to rock on top of Cloud. "It's like I … Can feel every little vein on it. I can feel all the little ridges on your head. I can feel your blood pumpin', too. It's really fuckin' cute."

Cloud licked his lips, knowing exactly what Sephiroth meant. Cute wasn't the word he'd use to describe it, but he could live with Sephiroth's description. His hands cupped Sephiroth's neck, and pulled him down. He followed, spreading his legs wider as he bent over Cloud's smaller form.

With his lips and tongue engaged, Cloud's hands brushed along hot skin around and back, to run down to Sephiroth's ass. He followed its movements, not wanting to disrupt whatever rhythm Sephiroth had discovered. He was hovering right over the edge of his own orgasm, and there was a definite freedom in not having to worry about holding it.

But he longed to be able to pump his hips up into Sephiroth. He sighed, "Can you take the Slow off me? I think I'm alright for a little bit."

"Lemme know if you want it again," Sephiroth said, nipping Cloud's lips. "Don't come … I'm not done."

Cloud nodded, and suddenly he was able to move. Before he even knew what he was doing, his hips were bucking wildly up off the mattress and into Sephiroth. He couldn't even stop himself, and he didn't particularly want to. Sephiroth reacted instantly, he'd been almost ginger in his riding of Cloud, not wanting to somehow hurt the more delicate body. But this pushed Sephiroth hard, and made him growl.

It felt so good. Cloud was crying out, his fingers digging into Sephiroth's hips as he made the General bounce with every upwards thrust. Cloud looked up, and noticed how prettily Sephiroth's hair was moving and catching the light.

"Oh shit! Seph, help!" Cloud groaned, and instantly he was immobile again. Blood gushed through his system, his balls clenched, but thankfully it abated just enough to allow him to stave off a premature ejaculation. His chest was heaving, and he collapsed back. "God damn it, I wish you didn't feel so fucking good."

Sephiroth laughed, "You don't even know how many times I've thought the same thing about you."

Cloud blushed even harder, "… How long are you … I mean …"

With a sigh, Sephiroth straightened up and began to almost lazily pump his cock. "I'll hurry."

"No!" Cloud moaned, and gently pushed Sephiroth's hands away. "I don't mean that! I don't want it to be over … I just need a … Time guesstimate. I need to … Organize myself or something! I need to ration my … My – Ung! – Ration my balls or something, I dunno – "

"Cloud?" Sephiroth called, interrupting his absurd line of thought.

"What?"

"We're gonna do this again. Plenty," Sephiroth smiled, rolling his hips to emphasize. "Don't stress 'bout this time, it's new. Next time … I'll make damn sure you're better organized. Hopefully we won't even need Slow. Sound good?"

Cloud nodded solemnly, knowing there was no other solution. "You don't … Think I'm a bad fucker, do you?"

Sephiroth laughed hard. "No, baby! You're an excellent fucker."

Cloud giggled with Sephiroth until he was nearly in tears, and then took Sephiroth's cock in both hands. He knew how to make squirm, but that squirming only added to the tightness around him. Cloud's eyes rolled shut, and he almost wanted to call mercy and accept the bottom for the remainder of their lovemaking. Being the top sure was a lot of physical responsibility! He was used to being able to come whenever he pleased – usually Sephiroth egged him on and chuckled when he popped too soon.

Now though, he had to resort to magical interference to hold it off. It was beyond frustrating! The combination of wanting more of that smooth heat and needing to get away from it before he went insane drove Cloud to pump Sephiroth hard.

The General move deliberately on top of him, working in whatever secret motions felt most pleasing to himself. He paid no attention to Cloud's needs because all he needed to do was breathe to make Cloud tense with need. So he just took in the sight of Cloud so worked up and ready; Sephiroth always thought the flush he would get across his chest was sexy. Now the little blondie was practically breaking out in hives.

Sephiroth liked having that effect on him, Cloud was always so responsive and giving in every way. He let his mind drift a bit while looking down at Cloud, thinking towards the future and perhaps a time when they would be well acquainted with every part of each other's bodies. A time when they would be able to work each other to perfection.

Not that these baby steps didn't have their charm. Sephiroth smiled down as Cloud began to work through the Slow status effect, his hips slowly rolling up. Those tiny motions from an oversexed, overeager teenager were filed away, and would probably be sexier than any pounding an older Cloud would eventually deliver.

Sephiroth licked his lips, watching as Cloud forced his body to move. He wanted to see more, and began to draw the Slow out of Cloud's system slowly.

Cloud didn't seem to notice the gradual regain of control of his lower body. He was busy working and twisting Sephiroth's length with one hand, the other wandering over his hip to his perfect ass. Cloud dug his fingers in slightly, lost in his own experience, completely unguarded and not even realizing that Sephiroth was watching him.

Cloud's eyelashes brush closed and he dug his head back. Sephiroth bent over and kissed his throat, unable to resist. Cloud leaned up quickly and nudged Sephiroth's forehead with his lips, until their mouths met. With both hands on Sephiroth's ass, Cloud pulled him forward in a steady, restrained rhythm, not even realizing that the Slow was completely gone.

Sephiroth ground himself against Cloud's lean stomach, loving the sound of Cloud's whining moans. He came to the realization that he was free from Slow, and shouted desperately into Sephiroth's mouth.

"C'mon," Sephiroth whispered, slipping a hand between them to wring himself. "Do it. I'm ready. I want it."

Spilling onto Cloud's stomach didn't feel like masturbation – it was just a means to a very pleasurable end. Cloud choked out a hoarse cry of Sephiroth's name, and then his teeth suck into his bottom lip. Sephiroth felt his lover come from the inside out with a shock of wet heat. It was so different, and so fucking cute, there was no other word that he could use to explain it.

An orgasm from the other end was slightly shocking for both parties. Cloud could feel the clenching in Sephiroth's body, and it felt like the General had had a hard one … It amazed Cloud to think that he could do that to him. He could do anything to him.

For several moments they laid there together, until Cloud began to whimper from over stimulation, and pushed up on Sephiroth's waist. He moved off of Cloud, who was paralyzed and looked positively wrecked, and went to the bathroom to assume his cleanup duties.

Sephiroth sat on the toilet and was bemused to find himself doing something that Cloud normally did after sex. He found a tiny bit of blood, no big deal. The bigger deal was the holy huge load that was slowly creeping out of his ass. He wondered if there was a way to speed up the process.

"What's the fuckin' deal, Cloud? There's like a gallon of your jizz in me," Sephiroth called loudly, hoping to get a reaction.

"There's another gallon of yours on the underside of my chin," Cloud complained with a smile, appearing in the doorway with a slow, relaxed trod. He stopped at the sink and looked at himself, sliding fingers absent-mindedly through the semen blotting his chest, chin and face. "It'd be easier if we were girls. Not so much mess."

"You don't know much about dykes, then," Sephiroth retorted, and wiped between his legs with a wad of toilet paper. "I've stayed with Rhonda and Julie overnight. There's a huge mess after they fuck. And it takes forever. And ya can smell it all day. It's pretty invasive to outside parties."

"How do you know this? They fucked with you in the room? When did this happen?"

Before Cloud could get worked up, Sephiroth clarified, "A while back, I stayed in the room their kids have now, next door to theirs. This place was gettin' the pipes fixed. And I only know about the mess because I offered to do the laundry and some other chores to help out. Big mistake all around. I found used tampons, too."

"Jesus," Cloud grimaced. "Living with Cam, I forgot all about periods. So gross."

"And babies," Sephiroth shook his head. "Even grosser."

"And douching."

"You douche," Sephiroth accused. "I guess I should too, at some point?"

"I don't wanna talk about that!" Cloud blushed, wiping himself down quickly with a towel.

"What? Why? It's just an enema, no big – "

"Sephiroth!" Cloud shrieked. "Let's have a little mystique, okay? Just a little!"

"Mystique? I eat your ass regularly. There's no mystique left, cutie."

Cloud threw the towel in the sink. "You don't need to know about anything I do to make myself … Cute. And I don't need to know about you. As far as we're concerned, we both were fucking born that way. Deal?"

Cloud held out a pinkie. Sephiroth smiled, and in the name of mystique, took the delicate little finger in his own and twisted it. "Deal. Although … You taste awesome either way."

Cloud was still red, but was smiling. "… You too."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

It was over.

Cloud, along with every other boy in the entire Shin-Ra Military Academy was stripping their clothes off.

It was one of the greatest moments of his life. Every single boy in the entire school was crawling all over campus in their underwear. It was tradition to strip down after the last class of the school year, and everyone had donned colorful, patriotic, or downright ridiculous underwear.

You don't fuck with tradition.

Cloud and Cameron had gone brief shopping just for that specific occasion the weekend before. Cloud had bought a pair of briefs that had a donkey on the crotch, and declared 'Smart Ass' on the back. Cameron's boxer briefs were black and pink with Hello Kitty print, which they were certain every boy in the whole fucking school would also have, but they were the only ones that were big enough for him.

He didn't know where Cam was, and he couldn't be bothered with looking for him. Mostly naked and with the sun shining on his hair, Cloud fell back into the grass and looked up at the polluted Midgar sky, then at the sea of hot boys in their underwear as they pranced by.

He waved happily to several naked boys he knew. A friend named Andrew who he always paired up with in sword training, buff Gary from the gym who was straight as an arrow but made it his habit to kiss Cloud on the cheek or forehead almost daily, a harmless stoner named Ben who used to be fat, and was always apt to share a cigarette.

Skylar stopped to talk in his purple boxers with polka dots, "We made it."

"I can't believe the year's over," Cloud grinned. "It felt like three."

"It was long, but at least we're not so scrawny anymore," Skylar pointed out.

And it was true. Overnight, Cloud had broken out with a terrible case of ABS! It had startled him in the mirror, and he was so excited he'd begun going shirtless whenever he could manage it. Meanwhile, Skylar had obtained a growth spurt that Cloud envied … He was turning into quite the hunk.

But he was still a little boy at heart, and bounced on his knees, "Next year we get magic!"

Cloud grinned, "I don't wanna think about next year, yet. I wanna enjoy the break and let my mind fucking rot for a minute."

Skylar laughed, "Same here, oh my God. I've gotta go grab my stuff and get the hell out of here."

And then, an odd moment. Skylar leaned forward, and then stopped. Cloud watched him curiously, and then reached out to touch his arm.

They met in the middle with a quick hug. Skylar tried not to focus on how smooth Cloud's skin was, or the warmth of his bare, tan shoulders in the summer sun, or gentle smell of his shampoo. And he didn't even dare glance at the bulge in Cloud's briefs. These were nice things, the kind of things that made a young man's heart race, but he knew they were not right for each other in that way.

So Skylar released him after a friendly and respectful hug length. "Have a good vacation, Cloud. And happy birthday."

"… See ya," Cloud murmured. But Skylar didn't move away immediately, and it sent a shock of chill fear down Cloud's spine. 'Not another Reno incident, please! I'm in underwear this time!'

The spell was broken by Cameron, who nearly crushed the both of them with his sudden weight. After a full year of training, the young man was becoming a wall of muscle likened General Angeal Hewley. Cam was becoming physically formidable, but still a complete moron.

He was screaming unintelligibly, and Cloud only made out the word 'FINALLY!' somewhere in the Midgar drawling banshee wail.

"Get off me you fat fuck!" Cloud shouted, nearly breathless.

Skylar was wiggling helplessly, his recent muscle tone didn't exempt him from Cameron's ability to crush anything he landed on to pieces. Cameron finally moved off of them, only to sit up and grab them both into a manic hug, "WE'S FUCKIN' ROOMMATES AGAIN NEXT YEAR, CLOUD! AN' IN DA SAME ROOM AS WE IS NOW!"

This was the only string Cloud ever brought to Sephiroth's attention, which the General was happy to pull. He got to stay with Cameron in the same room, meaning they struck the Academy lottery of not having to move their stuff over break, and didn't have to get used to a brand new person the following year. Or the year after that, for that matter.

But he accepted Cam's fierce hug and pretended to be surprised with him, "Holy shit, that's terrible news! I wanted to get the hell away from you!"

"YOU CAN'T GO ANYWHERE'S, PSYCHO NEEDS YOU! I NEED YOU! YOU'S MY LITTLE FUCKIN' NORDIC BITCH FOREVER!"

"Says WHO?" Cloud shouted, punching at Cam's shoulders.

"SAYS ME!" Cameron gave Cloud a rough kiss squarely on his lips, then yanked Skylar's head in for a kiss as well, "WE ARE FUCKIN' OUT OF SCHOOL YOU STUPID GAY SONS A BITCHES! WHY DA FUCK ARE WE LAYIN' AROUND MAKIN' OUT FOR! WE GOTTA GO GETTA DRINK BEFORE'S WE ALL SPLIT UP!"

There was no attempting to stop Cameron when he was like this, he was an absolute tornado of a man. Cloud accepted his fate and let the bigger boy pull him to his feet, and Skylar was quick to follow, especially after a kiss from Cameron. The bleach blonde would take what he could get.

By the time they'd reached the dorm, Cameron finally calmed down a little bit. He pulled Cloud, Skylar, Skylar's friend Mark, a funny kid named Cory, some kid with a vagina printed on the front of his briefs, and his other close friend Mikey into their dorm room and slammed the door conspiratorially. "Now don't gimme no shit for not tellin' you's guys, especially you Cloud … but lookie what I got …"

Cam opened his closet, and from the mess of clothes, he produced the largest bottle of Jack Daniels that Cloud had ever seen in his life. It was the size of a small child. Then, he pulled out another one. And a case of Coke. And a large bottle of Vodka. And a case of orange juice sippy bottles. And Cherry Brandy. And Wild Turkey. And Vanilla Schnapps. And three six packs of beer.

Cloud balked, "When did you get all this? And how did you get it in here?"

"Shh," Cam said softly, and handed him the vodka.

Around five that evening, Sephiroth answered a call from Cloud, expecting to hear a load of whining because he was working until nine that evening. Instead of Cloud's voice, he was greeted by the sounds of loud music, boisterous schoolboys, and then a drunken Nibelheim slur, "Hallllo Sephhh…"

Sephiroth took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair, "You're drunk. Where are you?"

"My room," Cloud made a noise of affirmation, then went on to say, "Did you know – and I'm jussst guesssing, but I think – did you know that I lovvve you more than I love myssself? I love you ssso mush I could jussst KILL YOU!"

"Makes sense," Sephiroth chuckled. "Well, I love you, too."

"God that's fuckinnng hot when yooou saaay that," Cloud commented heatedly. "Will you commme to this party? We're alll in our underwear annn' I'd love it if you were in youuur underwear, too! Gosh there's a lot leffft to drink. Come help us drink it!"

"I'm a General, remember?" Sephiroth grinned, fondly remembering the days when he would attend those parties himself. "I'm s'posed to break up these kinds of things and sternly punish all Cadets involved for drinkin' on school grounds."

"PFFFFT!" Cloud didn't seem bothered by this. "Sephhh I love you ssso mush. Can I come over tomorrrow instead of tonnnight though? There'sss so much booze left annn' you wanna talllk to Madonnna? Asksksa quessstion 'bout Guyyy?"

Sephiroth wasn't even listening anymore, "That's exactly right, Cloud."

"Oh good. I'll call yooou because I love you so mush. I'll call you. Handsome ass mooother fucccker. I'll call you around sixxx in tha morning because I cannn't be without you for morrre than an hour!"

"You are so not gonna call me at six," Sephiroth laughed heartily. "You're gonna be on the fuckin' throne, if you're conscious at all."

"Donnn't tell me what I'm gonna do!" Cloud disagreed angrily. Someone in the background complained about Cloud apparently spilling something on them. "I'mmm gonna DO what I wanna DO!"

"Alright tough guy, you enjoy your party awright? Call me tomorrow."

"Sixxx hunnndred hours, General Sssitonmyface."

Sephiroth barked laughter, "Okay SOLDIER, be safe. And sleep on your side for me, okay?"

"Any way you wannnt me," Cloud said before hanging up.

Sephiroth did not receive a call at six the next morning. He received a call at one in the afternoon, in the middle of a run through Midgar Park. He smirked when he saw who was finally calling, and ran in place while he picked up with a cheerful pant, "Good afternoon!"

"… Sephiroth …" Was the dark, ominous reply.

"Yes, dear?"

"… Please … Please … I need you so bad …"

"Whatever for?"

"… Peel me off the bathroom floor … Been here for hours … Days …" Cloud sounded like he was crying.

"Can you wait a little while longer, babe? I need to run home and take a quick shower."

"Don't care … How dirty you are … I need to know that … You're coming right now. Please …" The begging ended with an unidentifiable whine. Suddenly there was nothing but pitiful moans of upheaval, and the unmistakable sound of vomit hitting toilet water.

Sephiroth was tempted to hang up, but managed to make it through the sickening sound effects of his lover in peril. He sighed. "On my way. Did you have fun last night?"

Cloud gasped for air, sniffed hard and then answered the question. "Ung … Hell yeah I had fun."

"Didn't fuck anyone did you?" Sephiroth asked, half joking, half serious.

"What? Not even," Cloud muttered. "We were having a séance all night. We were talking to Madonna, it was creepy."

"She's ain't dead!"

"How do you know?"

Sephiroth didn't believe this far fetched alibi one bit, that is until he found the evidence strewn all over Cloud's room. Four passed out boys and three barely conscious ones, all in their underwear and t-shirts and not the faintest odor of sex. Instead, they were accompanied by dozens of empty bottles, a vomit soaked quija board, destroyed Madonna CDs, and puddles of candle wax all over the carpet.

"You guys are so fuckin' dumb," Sephiroth declared.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sephiroth heaved a heavy sigh of frustration for the thousandth time. Cloud was getting tired of the grunty sounds of his boyfriend's aggravation, and the constant stop and go of the tank was making him severely carsick.

"Why don't you just let me drive?" Cloud cried, tightening his arms around his mid section to stave off another wave of putrid nausea. It wasn't from an epic hangover, but dreaded motion sickness, which was twice as bad since his stomach was still sensitive.

"Bein' on this road is nerve wrackin' enough without not havin' control," Sephiroth gritted through his teeth, squeezing the wheel of the tank between his fingers tight enough to cause his arms to tremble. He slammed on the breaks again, and then carefully touched the gas.

Stop, go. Stop, go. Cloud pressed his forehead to the window and looked out at the dry, mountainous landscape.

They were currently one thousand, four hundred and seventy feet off the ground on the small dirt road that curled along the side of Mt. Nibelheim. The hefty tank just barely fit on the slim channel. But while it was frightening for Sephiroth, Cloud had learned to drive on this road and knew it well. It never stopped being scary, but with the way Sephiroth was hesitantly driving, it made it far worse than it had to be.

Cloud howled, "This is going to take hours at this rate, and I'm about to throw up! I'll have us up and off this road in twenty minutes, I promise."

"No," Sephiroth growled, pushing his foot into the break and tapping the gas, causing them to lurch and for rocks to tumble over the edge and down to the ground far, far below.

Cloud unbuckled his seat belt, "I'm sure we'll be fine if we fall, but your truck will be toast."

Sephiroth slammed on the breaks again and frowned. "Is fallin' a real possibility?"

"The road narrows up ahead," Cloud then squeezed Sephiroth's hand, and cleverly slid his fingers beneath to separate it from its' rigor mortis grip on the wheel. "Trust me. I'll have us up in no time. I need to go to the bathroom. Please?"

Sephiroth hesitated for a few moments before he unbuckled himself, "Awright."

He slid across the stick shift while Cloud crossed his lap. Cloud was tempted to flirt, but Sephiroth seemed in no mood for grabass. When they settled in their respective seats, they buckled themselves back in. Cloud wiggled on the heavily warmed seat, and began to reacquaint himself with the controls for the massive tank. Sephiroth couldn't help but close his eyes after taking in the ridiculous sight of delicate Cloud behind the wheel of his precious monster. He sighed again as Cloud clumsily gunned the engine, and opened his mouth to lay down some ground rules for proper care and handling of his other baby.

Cloud cut him off before he could utter a single syllable, "Don't tell me how to drive."

The tank lurched and nearly tore them off the side of the mountain, but instead of stomping the breaks, Cloud held his foot down on the gas and the wheel sharply to the side, and had them spiraling up the mountain at an alarming rate.

Sephiroth was determined not to appear as freaked out as he was, and settled against the headrest. It was true that he could and would have himself and Cloud out of the tank in moments if the unthinkable happened and they slipped off the criminally thin road ... But it was his tank! His metal, mechanical pride and joy! It would break his heart to see it as a crumpled pile of scrap metal, a poor casualty at the base of this stupid mountain.

Cloud's tongue was stuck out in concentration as he moved the wheel with the curve of the steep road, while keeping the pressure on the gas steady. That was the trick: no hesitation.

Cloud laughed a little, "Coming down is a lot more fun."

"Can't wait," Sephiroth frowned, crossing his leg over his knee nervously.

Within fifteen minutes, the road very suddenly widened and leveled out. That was record time for Cloud, and he celebrated with a couple of loud, joyous honks of the horn, "See? Piece of cake!"

Sephiroth blew a puff of air in bemusement. Then he winced when he saw a semi-truck waiting to descend the road, the only thing stopping it from rolling right on down the skinny path and killing them all was a crude, old fashioned stop light system. That was a disaster waiting to happen if he ever saw one. Sephiroth was tempted to ask if that light ever failed, but decided to keep his mouth shut: they'd have to make the descent themselves, in a few days and he didn't feel like worrying about it.

"Just a second," Cloud murmured, and pulled over on the side of the road. He literally leapt from the tank, eager to stand on solid ground. He inhaled and exhaled deeply for several moments before he unzipped his pants and began to shamelessly piss into the patchy grass beside the tank. Sephiroth smiled at the little hop Cloud performed before he zipped back up and climbed into the driver's seat.

"Feel better?"

"Tons. Want me to drive the rest of the way?" Cloud asked sweetly, reaching over to caress Sephiroth's knee.

"Sure. You know where we're goin', anyways," he agreed. Cloud's skills had proven respectable, and he was sick of driving anyways.

Cloud was delighted, and took the chance to rev the engine and put some of the tank's formidable power to use with boyish enthusiasm. He knowingly took turns and passes on the graveled roads, some of them quite steep, some of them winding, all of them the last place on the planet Sephiroth wanted to be.

He felt his stomach tighten again, this time with nerves of a different variety. He'd gladly put off meeting Cloud's family indefinitely if he could possibly help it. But with April Strife's decision to relocate to Junon, Sephiroth's tank had been volunteered to assist with the move.

In only two more days, Cloud was turning seventeen. Not only was it his birthday, it was his summer vacation. And the only thing he wanted for his birthday weekend was to help his mother pack up their old home, put it up for sale, and help her get to Junon comfortably.

How could he say no without looking like a complete asshole? He couldn't.

It didn't stop him from wanting to, though.

It had been nearly a full year since Cloud had been home, and while he knew he'd never live in Nibelheim again during his life, it didn't stop him from missing it. He wanted to see his mom, his aunts, his cousins, his grandma, his great grandma, his house, his old junk ... His records. Sephiroth had accepting the responsibility of adopting his record player and collection, and that was reason enough to make a cross-continental trip as far as Cloud was concerned.

"I could shit my pants!" Cloud cried out of nowhere with a bounce in the driver's seat. "We're like ten minutes away from home!"

Sephiroth smiled, but it was more of an awkward showing of his teeth. Cloud was far too happy to notice the lack of genuine enthusiasm. Another short, winding road, and they could see the Nibelheim town gates. It was quaint enough, as was the old style of architecture that the town had employed. They drove through like visitors from outer space, slowly passing by the whimsical buildings and picturesque, run down water tower. The setting sun made the sky pink, purple and dusty, the small lit windows adding to the delicate charm.

Then Sephiroth became thunderstruck by a sudden realization: this was not some Hollywood recreation of an old, shitty town. This actually was, an old, shitty town.

Nothing was manufactured for aesthetic value ... This was how these people really lived. Sephiroth's inner decorator nearly passed out. He wanted to upgrade everything he saw with steel, pleasing red brick, mocha tones and termite-proof lacquer, floor to ceiling shop windows with back lighting, and manicured gardens as far as the eye could see.

Sephiroth knew in that moment, without a doubt, that he was a city boy. He needed to be surrounded by concrete to feel comfortable.

He kept his face perfectly neutral while inwardly gawking at the hideous buildings, the unsightly construction, the unappealing locals in their heavy flannel and overalls, peacoats and wool. When someone strolled out of the five and dime wearing a fucking bonnet, Sephiroth had to pipe up, "... Are you actually from here?"

Cloud just glanced at him with a smile. Cloud was stylish and young, but there was always something that made him different from most people Sephiroth had ever known. It wasn't just that Cloud had struggled to be different from the bass ackwards people that he'd grown up with ... Cloud was just different in general. He was two hundred years ahead of this town's time, and it had catapulted him into some other realm entirely. Sephiroth only thanked God that he wasn't burned at the stake as a young child.

To Sephiroth's mounting dismay, Cloud stopped the car in front of a modest home that fit right into the ridiculous scenery. It was rustic, old, and utterly hysterical to think that Cloud had dwelt there for the better part of his young life.

Cloud ejected himself from the driver's seat and ran up the steps, then stopped when he realized Sephiroth had not gotten out of the tank, yet. He laughed and rushed back to his door to retrieve him by force. He then pulled his slightly unwilling lover to his former childhood home.

Cloud began to feel in his pockets for his keys, but the door was torn open before he could pull them out. Sephiroth blinked at the extremely small, young blonde woman who yanked Cloud into a hug. It was hard to imagine that the fear mongering voice on the other end of the phone was this petite thing.

"How did you get so big?" She asked sternly, holding his face in her hands and shaking it. Her blue eyes moved with tears as she continued to squeeze her son's face. "And you are so cute! Were you always this cute!"

"Yes!" Cloud laughed, trying to shake himself free of her death grip. "Mom, let go!"

April most certainly did not, and kissed Cloud's forehead, his nose, and his cheeks before pulling him into a bear-like hug. There was a lit cigarette in one of her hands, but she kept it away from Cloud's skin and hair was practiced ease. She asked, "Was the drive okay?"

"Yeah," Cloud said, accepting the hugs and kisses with a red face, and rubbing her arms in an attempt to placate her strong desire for affection.

After another hug she finally relented, and Cloud gave Sephiroth a slightly embarrassed smile. April blatantly sized him up for several moments before putting out her hand.

Sephiroth leaned down to give it a quick kiss, "I'm glad to finally meet you."

"Be more glad you're a fucking giant, or else I'd kick your ass."

Cloud bellowed, "Oh, mom!"

Sephiroth bit back what he really wanted to say, and merely faked a handsome laugh with practiced political ease. "I'm sure you could, ma'am."

He'd choose politeness over cheekiness with Cloud's mother, at least until he knew her better. He actually gave a shit what she thought, especially since he was doomed to have the small woman in his life a lot more often with her relocation. His life was turning to shit.

April blew a puff of smoke in his direction. "You'd better believe it. Let's not fucking stand here all day. People will talk if I have two devilishly handsome men on my front porch," She gave a scathing glare to the surrounding neighborhood. "More than they usually do, anyways."

Sephiroth was pleased to see that the home was extremely clean, and not at all the dusty, kitschy, ceramic figured affair he'd had in mind when seeing the outside of the building. The only knick knacks appeared to be little clay animals that Cloud had made as a child, and a couple of framed childhood drawings done in crayon and splattered with glitter. There were also photos of Cloud that seemed to represent each year in school, and even his current Academy badge photo.

"I have dinner ready, sit for a minute and I'll set the table," April commanded, drawing his attention away from the mementos.

Cloud puffed out his chest, "Mom! I'm not a guest, I'll help you!"

"That's new," she remarked, but motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen.

Cloud leaned in close to Sephiroth, "You are a guest, though. Sit down."

He stole a kiss off Sephiroth's lips and didn't give him time to argue before flitting into the kitchen on his mother's heels. She began taking a cottage pie out of the oven, where it had been left to cool down. The sight was so familiar and missed, that he couldn't resist hugging her from behind. "It doesn't feel like I've been gone long at all."

"No, it doesn't," she answered, touching his face after she set the pie on the table. "This'll be our last couple days in the house. I'm glad you came back."

"Me too," He said, keeping close to her as she moved around the kitchen like a baby chick that needed guiding. He leaned in even closer and whispered, "So ... What do you think of him?"

"Sephiroth?" She shrugged, turning to get plates. "He's a guy."

"In a good way?" Cloud begged, taking the plates from her and putting them on the table.

"It's just funny to me, he's the complete opposite of what I would have pictured for you. Not saying he's bad, just different," She began to cut a head of lettuce into a mixing bowl.

Cloud's love for Sephiroth didn't hinge on his mother's approval, but he had to ask, "Why? He's beautiful! He's funny, he's passionate, he's successful, he's strong, he loves me ... What did you have in mind for me? Some local boy who won't even hold my hand in the street? Some soccer hooligan who cuts down trees and has back hair? Some guy who would take me to live in some cabin on the outskirts of town, sleeping with one eye open in case the villagers come to set the token faggots on fire?"

"Well that was certainly dramatic," April commented with a grimace. "It's not Midgar, but Nibelheim isn't that bad."

Cloud gave a heaving teenage sigh, "Well you didn't grow up here gay. You have no idea how it can be."

"Yeah, what do I know? I just grew up here with a baby," she said while lighting a cigarette. Once it was torched, she laughed, "A gay baby, at that."

Another sigh. "Whatever, it's not the same."

"It's our last weekend here. Let's not bullshit about things we can't change," April decided with a kiss to Cloud's forehead.

Cloud wasn't done yet, "So, if Seph isn't right for me, what should I be looking for that'll make me so much happier?"

"On paper, he couldn't be better," April agreed. "I just always pictured you with someone ... With dark hair. Someone a little closer to your age, some real smartass kind of goofball that you could chase around and take care of."

Cloud blushed slightly, thinking of someone who definitely fit that bill, "That guy's straight, mom."

"Sephiroth is too serious for you."

"No he's not! He's just nervous, you're not giving him a chance to open up and be himself yet."

"Well, what do I know, then?" She laughed.

"Mom! I love this man with all my heart!" Cloud cried, his voice echoing right into the living room – as if Sephiroth couldn't hear every word that was being said, anyways. "I want you to tell me he's perfect!"

She set the bowl of salad on the table and grabbed Cloud by the scruff of his hair. "He's a man, like you. And all you men are filthy, wild, disgusting animals. And no matter what happens, you could always do better. Don't forget that."

Cloud stared up at her for a few moments before smiling, "I missed you."

"Same to you," she let him go to open the window to let her cigarette smoke waft out. "He is perfect, Cloud. Until he doesn't make you happy anymore – he's perfect."

"I know!" Cloud grinned happily, and then swung the kitchen door open. "Seph, we're done talking about you now, come get some food!"

"Fantastic," Sephiroth called dryly. He entered the room looking almost as uncomfortable as he felt, but ventured for a joke. "You're not gonna be eatin' me, are you?"

"I probably will later," Cloud smiled cheekily, pulling him to the table. If April was offended by such a comment, she didn't show it. Sephiroth decided to kiss his forehead after being forced into a seat between the two of them, and she didn't react beyond lighting a new cigarette.

It hung from her mouth as she began to dish out gooey slices of the cottage pie and smaller bowls of salad. "So here's the situation, boys. I have most of the house packed up. What I need you two to do this weekend is your room, the attic, and help me with the kitchen."

"The attic?" Cloud moaned.

April ignored him, "We have the real estate agent coming to get the keys on Monday morning, so it has to be spotless by then."

Sephiroth didn't hear a word of it. He was too busy digging into his meal, which was ridiculously delicious. Cloud was also stuffing his face with the familiar dish, but still found the will to complain, "How are we supposed do all that in two days? That will take up most of my vacation!"

"Maybe if it was just your lazy ass working. But your giant is here to help you, right Seph?" She asked, smiling at him as he inhaled his food. "And the family will come over to take what we're not bringing with us. They'll help us out."

"Yeah, by getting in the way and giving orders," Cloud grumbled, picking at his food moodily. "... Is my dad coming by?"

"If you want him to," April said, finishing off her salad before moving onto the pie. "He doesn't know you're here, I didn't tell him."

Cloud hummed thoughtfully. "… I'm not ready, yet. And we'll be busy packing."

Sephiroth finally came up from his food for air, "We'll get started after dinner."

April smiled, "That eager to get the fuck out of here?"

"You have no idea," Sephiroth said before he could stop himself. April seemed delighted with her first glimpse of his true personality, and laughed her glorious smoker's laugh.

Cloud was still looking at her. "Will you be disappointed if I don't see him?"

"It's your choice, Clow," She told him. Privately, she was thrilled to have sole custody of her son, even though he was now a man. Of course, she did share custody with the silver-haired man before her. And he was such an … Odd looking creature. Pretty, and built well, but features that just didn't make sense.

Sephiroth noticed her staring, and nodded with a smile. She watched him take another big bite of food, and was a bit shocked at his mouth full of razor sharp canine teeth. How … Bizarre. She needed to get to the bottom of this.

"How old are you?" She suddenly asked.

Sephiroth shoved more pie into his mouth. "Cloud didn't tell you?"

"He did, but I'm asking you."

"Twenty-three," He answered.

"Twenty-three," she paused to tap the ash off her cigarette. "Forgive me for being rude or blunt … But what the fuck are you supposed to be, exactly?"

"Mom!" Cloud shouted.

Sephiroth swallowed his food slowly. "Well … I'm a General. That means that I have authority over – "

"No, I mean … Your eyes. I've never seen eyes like yours in my life."

"It's a rare birth defect," Sephiroth responded easily, and rattled off a medical term that Cloud knew for a fact was made up. He was giving April's mother a press response. "It's an elongation of the pupil, and only effects my vision for reading, which I have corrective lenses for."

"Show me your teeth."

"What is this, Little Red Riding Hood?" Cloud lamented. "Leave him alone, mom!"

Sephiroth ran his tongue over them inside his mouth, before pointedly baring them for her for a few seconds. "I had a few knocked out in the Academy and in war, these are temporary corrective denture replacements, so don't be alarmed."

April hummed. "… And your hair? Gray at twenty-three is awfully sad. Why don't you dye it?"

Sephiroth shrugged a shoulder. "No time in the field. Plus it earns me a little bit of respect from the older vets."

"Hair down to your knees earns your respect?" April prodded.

"Yes."

"I see," April said with an air of finality. Both Sephiroth and Cloud breathed a sigh of relief before she pulled her trump card. "So, a respected, twenty-three year old with corrective lenses, dentures and gray hair falls in love with a sixteen year old Cadet?"

"MOTHER."

"Cloud tells me you were quite the wonderful mother at the age of sixteen," Sephiroth commented smoothly.

"Don't try to call me a hypocrite."

"Then don't try to call me a pedophile."

There was a loaded silence as they both remained still, sizing each other up as contenders for the brawl that was brewing.

"How about this?" Cloud interrupted cheerfully. "Nobody's a hypocrite, and definitely nobody's a pedophile. Sixteen is perfectly legal, seventeen is even more legal, and I think we all need a drink!" He then quickly got up from the table and went to the cabinet that usually held the liquor.

"There's vodka in the freezer," April suggested, then turned her attention back to Sephiroth, "If I really thought you were a pedophile, I'd have done something about it a long time ago. I wanna hear it from you, face to face, why you're choosing to be with my son."

"Mom, what are you doing?" Cloud frowned.

"Grilling the fuck out of your boyfriend," April said, looking directly into Sephiroth's eyes.

"Awright. You wanna grill me? I'll spell it out for you," Sephiroth quickly accepted and swallowed a shot of Jack Daniels that Cloud placed in front of him. "Cloud's the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"Jesus," Cloud muttered, and took a long drink straight from the bottle before refilling Sephiroth's shot glass.

Sephiroth didn't drink it, and continued, "He calls me every single day of his life to tell me about what's happened, and it always sounds like an adventure. I could listen to this kid talk for the rest of my life. He makes me laugh like nobody ever has, the way he reacts to things and his point of view just cracks me up. He's very smart though, and he's dedicated, and he's got the kindest fuckin' heart out of anyone I've ever met. And April, that is not some regurgitated bullshit people in relationships say, but don't understand the meanin' of. This man … your son is so beautiful inside.

"Best of all, he gets me. Not many people do. Why wouldn't I wanna be with him?"

"You forgot to mention how cute he is, "April smiled, and somehow managed to cancel out every ounce of negativity in the room. She was more than pleased with Sephiroth's answer because it was truly from the heart, and a pleased Strife woman made a happy house indeed.

Sephiroth appraised Cloud with a raised eyebrow. "Eh, it kind of goes without sayin'. He knows he's adorable."

Adorable indeed, and Cloud felt like his face was on fire. "Can we please change the subject?"

"No we cannot," April decided, taking another drink. "I've had to listen to you talk about Sephiroth all year. It's about time I heard about you."

"I could tell you plenty," Sephiroth said, then turned to Cloud. "What else is there to drink?"

"Half a bottle of everything on Earth," Cloud shrugged, clinking bottles and perfectly happy to be talking about something else. "Want some Nibelheim whiskey? It's good."

"We should probably drink it all, less to pack," April reasoned. "Save some for your aunts tomorrow, though."

"Just gimme the whiskey bottle," Sephiroth nodded.

"Cloud honey, will you make me another drink, too? This one's going fast," April said, scooting her chair to lean closer to Sephiroth. "You gotta forgive me for the grilling."

"It's cool, I get it."

"So, give me the dirt!"

He was swallowing liquor like it was water, "What kind of dirt, exactly?"

April disagreed, "I want dirty dirt on Cloud."

"Clean dirt!" Cloud cried.

"Dirty dirt, huh?" Sephiroth scratched his head. "Well ... on occasion, Cloud's a screamer."

"Sephiroth!" Cloud shrieked, nearly dropping a bottle.

"Just like that," Sephiroth nodded.

April laughed heartily, "More!"

"NO!"

"Oh, I have a story!" Sephiroth suddenly declared, and took another long drink before settling closer to April to dish. "It happened about a month ago, the last time we went out to the club."

Cloud's face was already blood red, "Please don't tell this story ..."

Sephiroth ignored him, "It was a good night, we did the dancin' thing and the drinkin' thing."

"Do you actually dance?" April inquired.

"Not well."

"Liar!" Cloud interrupted, setting more drinks in front of them. "You dance like a stripper!"

Sephiroth shrugged, not at all embarrassed. "I guess. Well, we danced and stuff, and I kinda let him drink a little too much. It was his night to unwind though, I just wanted to give him everything he wanted. I shoulda cut him off, but ... I can't say no to Cloud. Ever."

"It's easy, I'll teach you how," April told him.

"But that face …" Sephiroth smiled, reaching out to press Cloud's nose. "He's an angel."

"He's a monster," April disagreed.

"Fuck you," Cloud drawled dryly and took another mouthful of Schnapps.

"Little bastard!" April's fist shot out and she knocked her son right in the chest, causing him to hiccup half his drink back into the bottle. "You gonna talk to your mother like that?"

"No, ma'am," Cloud sang, hiding his smile as he drank some more. His mother's abuse didn't actually hurt, anymore.

"Go on," April urged Sephiroth.

"Well anyways. On the way home from the club on the train, Cloud wanted to ..." Sephiroth stared at her for a moment, unsure of how to phrase it.

"Crochet?" April asked sarcastically, sipping at a new drink.

"Become intimate," Sephiroth decided.

"It wasn't like that!" Cloud argued. He attempted to give his mother a pleading, angelic look.

Get blind drunk? Try to convince his boyfriend to fuck him on a train in public? Her innocent son? Never!

"Yeah it was. You kept feelin' me up and shit. And the whole train car was full of people, and finally I had enough - "

"Sephiroth, she doesn't want to hear about this!" Cloud tried to interrupt, throwing himself around his shoulders as if to buffer his voice.

Sephiroth kept right on talking, " - so I said, 'If you can clear everyone out of this train car, we'll make somethin' happen. If not, hands off 'til we get home.'"

April quickly lit a new cigarette, "Then what?"

Cloud was trying to cover Sephiroth's mouth with his hands, "End of story! Nothing happened after that!"

Sephiroth yanked Cloud into his lap and cocooned him with his vice-like arms, "So, there's this couple sittin' a few rows ahead. He walks up to them - "

"LA LA LA!" Cloud tried to drown him out desperately, wiggling around in an attempt to break free.

" - and he unzips his pants, and starts pissin' on them. Then he yells, 'Get off my train!'"

"What?" April cried.

Sephiroth was laughing against Cloud's shoulder, "He pissed on them. The woman bolted up and went to the door, but the dude was totally mad and he acted like he was gonna hit Cloud or somethin'. I was too fuckin' shocked to even do anythin' but laugh, and the dude's just a fat civvie anyways, so Cloud jerked him by the collar and tossed him towards the door, tellin' him to get off the fuckin' train car or he's gonna kick his ass. Keep in mind Cloud's zipper is still wide open and he's hangin' out of his pants - "

Cloud had given up trying to silence his boyfriend, since the damage had been done. He was now hanging his head and keening in embarrassment.

" - and so the couple went to a different car, and everyone else got outta there real fast. So Cloud comes back to where I'm sittin' and is like, 'I did it, so do me!' or somethin', I don't remember what he said exactly. But there was piss all over the front of his jeans, and honestly, I needed a fuckin' oxygen tank. I have never laughed so hard in my life."

April needed oxygen as well. "Oh my God!"

Cloud deflated against Sephiroth's shoulder, and looked up at him and caught his green eyes watering with bright mirth. "That's not even the end of it. I tried to get him back into his pants, but ..." Sephiroth didn't want to come out and say that Cloud had been suffering from a violent, raging erection at the time and couldn't physically fit back into his jeans, so he just let the point trail off, "Well, I was wearin' a jacket so I put it around his waist so he was at least somewhat decent. Then he stops, and he looks at me ... He opened his mouth ..." Sephiroth trailed off romantically. "... And puked right in my face."

"Eww!" April screamed, and it was a shrill, girlish sound.

"I turned my head away at the last second, so it didn't get in my mouth or anything. But like, my hair, my shirt, my pants - I was covered in this watery, projectile slime ... And he'd been drinkin' somethin' red all night long."

"Redheaded Sluts," Cloud supplied weakly.

Sephiroth continued, "So at this point I'm just worried that we're gonna be thrown off the train and have to fuckin' scam a taxi to get home. But thank fuckin' God we were only a couple stops away at that point. Cloud was bawlin', totally sick, couldn't even see straight. I carried him all the way inside, and we got into the shower with our clothes on.

"He was just totally beyond wasted, even threw up a little in the shower. I got our clothes off and got us both cleaned up, and I dried his hair a little and took him to bed. Made him drink some water and eat a piece of toast, and he kept it down, so I figured he didn't need to go to the hospital or anything. And we're layin' there and he lifts his head up, and he says to me in the sweetest little voice, '...

Do you still wanna fuck me?'"

Both April and Sephiroth succumbed to a new fit of laughter, and even Cloud had to join in at that point.

Once the General had enough air, he finished the tale, "And I of course, said 'Not a chance,' and he looked at me for a second – and I swear to Christ I thought he was gonna throw up again in my bed – but he just said, 'But you still love me?'"

Sephiroth then pressed his chin into Cloud's shoulder and smiled. "I don't think I ever loved him more."

Cloud huffed, "But what you actually said was, 'Don't talk anymore, your breath smells like an open coffin.'"

"It doesn't matter what I said, I felt love for you."

"Or rather you feel it now, telling the story," April smiled, lighting a new cigarette. "And since he's brushed his teeth."

"Precisely," Sephiroth nodded.

Cloud wiped his face of embarrassed tears and sat up, "Are we done, now?"

"Absolutely not," April decided. "Why don't you get started on packing your room?"

Cloud scowled, especially when Sephiroth agreed, "Yeah, I'll come up and help in a little while."

How the tables did turn! Cloud was unceremoniously exorcised from the kitchen as Sephiroth began to talk about Cloud's school performance and his personal affinity for knee-high sock wear. He decided that they could gab at his expense if that was what was needed for them to become close. It was good to see Sephiroth open up instead of being proper and polite – that persona always made Cloud a little nervous to be around.

And so he took Sephiroth's keys and went to the tank to retrieve their small amount of luggage, and carried it upstairs to his old bedroom. Walking through the door, he couldn't help but notice how the room felt bigger than he remembered, and slightly unfamiliar as he took in details that had previously been taken for granted. He opened his closet and saw bland, lifeless garments, and a few pieces of his "secret" wardrobe stuffed behind that. He remembered when he began to order clothes from the internet, and how he never wore them outside the house until the day he was briefed by Zack for the Academy.

How silly. He could have turned his entire high school career around in a matter of hours.

Cloud didn't think about that, and instead began to pull the old clothes off of hangers and fold them to be given away, when his old record box caught his attention. He went to it and smiled, flipping through his collection. He kept his favorites downstairs in the bathroom with the record player. He hadn't really kept any toys from his childhood - he tended to destroy anything in his path, anyways. When he'd happened upon his mother's records as an adolescent, she chalked it up to yet another casualty of little boy terrorism.

But he didn't tear apart her records. They were worth more to him intact. And soon, she began to buy him records of his very own, and that was when he'd learned to value material possessions.

"Keepers," Cloud said to them all. He gave them a pat and slowly strolled across the room and sat on his bed, feeling fresh sheets and blankets that his mother must have put out for them. The mattress' level of comfort was somewhere right between his springy dorm mattress at the school, and Sephiroth's far more luxurious, puffy mess of blankets, pillows and memory foam. His old bed was just right, though, just enough. He curled on his side and smiled, seeing tape marks from where Sephiroth's in famous Timeweek cover previously hung. It currently resided inside a folder in Midgar.

The real thing was currently guffawing downstairs, getting drunk with his mother.

Cloud closed his eyes until he heard heavy steps coming up the stairs. Sephiroth peeked into his room. "Your mom's goin' to the store, you want anything?"

Cloud shook his head. "Not really."

Sephiroth yelled the answer down the stairs. "He says no."

"Good!" April yelled back up. "I'll be back in about half an hour ... Which is not enough time to do anything fun, you got me?"

"Yes ma'am," Sephiroth answered, then reappeared in Cloud's doorway. "She's cool."

Cloud couldn't help but crack a smile. "I'm just glad you left out the worst parts of the story."

It was true, Cloud had remained completely erect during all of his troubles and sickness, and had tried several times to become intimate in the shower while Sephiroth was gently undressing and cleaning him.

"Don't worry about the story, she thought it was cute," Sephiroth dismissed, giving Cloud's room a few long sweeps of his bright green eyes. "Man, you've got a lot of shit."

Cloud nodded, and finally sat up on his bed. "I don't really want any of it, anymore."

"Are you sure? There's more than enough room at my place to store as much as you want," Sephiroth pushed himself off the door and lazily walked towards Cloud's closet. It was open and he peeked inside.

"It just feels like baggage at this point," Cloud said the words but didn't quite mean them. He knew what he had to do: grow up. He had to let go of these things, this house, and the idea that his childhood was going to be preserved for him. Not many people had that luxury, and he wasn't going to be one of them.

"We'll get rid of it all, then," Sephiroth suggested, then chewed the inside of his mouth when Cloud's face fell. "... Or we'll keep it all. It's up to you."

"I just don't know where to begin," Cloud muttered, and ran his hands through his hair, unintentionally fluffing it up almost completely vertical, like a well styled troll doll.

Sephiroth smiled, "I could just set it all on fire so we don't have to deal with it."

"That would be very helpful," Cloud sighed. "Are you too drunk to deal with this? We could just go drink some more and worry about it tomorrow."

"I'm buzzed, that's all. Let's get started now."

It took a while for April to return from the store, with food to feed the entire family the following day and limes for more drinking, and she found the boys half buried in Cloud's room, dividing clothes, books, magazines, pictures and general accumulated bullshit to be either kept, thrown away, or given away.

"It's interesting to see Cloud actually cleaning his own room," April commented, and threw a familiar box of his favorite cookies towards him.

Cloud caught it ravenously. "Mmm, thank you!"

"I thought you deserved some fuel if you're gonna start working tonight," April then told him sternly as he began to rip into the box. "Share some with Sephiroth."

Cloud sighed and twirled the box in his fingers. "Why should I?"

Sephiroth was thumbing through an old baseball card collection, looking for anything valuable – or any hot players to ogle with Cloud, "Because I'm bigger than you."

"Sad but true," Cloud decided, and allowed him to take a handful of the tiny cookies. They were shaped like various monsters native to the Nibelheim mountain range, and were filled with rich hazelnut cream.

Sephiroth hadn't swallowed them yet, and was already eyeing the box for more. He crawled closer, and Cloud scooted towards his mother, holding the box against his chest.

April smiled, and pet Cloud's chaotic hair. "Since you two are making a racket up here, I'm gonna sleep downstairs tonight. I put fresh sheets out for you two. If you need anything else just yell."

"Night mom!" Cloud chirped, greedily digging into more cookies with his elbow protruded to keep Sephiroth at bay.

Sephiroth stopped in his pursuit of treats and looked up at her. "April ... Are you sure you're okay with me sleepin' in here? I could take the couch if you'd prefer."

"No, be comfortable. We're all adults here," She reasoned. She then closed the door on her son and his boyfriend as they began to giggle and wrestle each other for the box of cookies. She could have just given them one of the other boxes she'd bought, but she knew that that was hardly the point.

Sounds of rowdiness and Cloud's relentless giggles followed her downstairs and into the living room, plainly heard through the ceiling. She just smiled and turned up the volume on the television.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Cloud?" Sephiroth whispered. Then with a little more force, "Cloud?"

He purred into Sephiroth's ear, "Mm ...?"

It felt damn good to wake up next to Sephiroth in Nibelheim. The summer in Midgar wasn't kind to Cloud, who loved to cuddle with his lover, a veritable heating pad of a human being. Waking up drenched in sweat wasn't pleasant, and Sephiroth's air conditioner didn't serve the arctic chill required to be close to him without burning up. Many times Cloud had had to forego his desire to sleep with Sephiroth in his arms, simply in order to be comfortable. It had him counting the days until fall.

But in Nibelheim, it was crisp enough in the late summer mornings to cuddle with Sephiroth under a light blanket to his heart's content. Both of Cloud's legs and arms were wound around his shirtless, muscular form from behind. His forehead was a bit damp, but it was worth it.

"Cloud?" Sephiroth repeated.

"Morning ..." Cloud smiled, and shifted against him. The friction to his morning wood against Sephiroth's warm thigh had his mind blooming with possibility. Sephiroth had been valiantly abstinent against fooling around in April's home the night before, but perhaps Cloud could convince him that they could get away with a little something before she realized they were awake.

"Cloud, please wake up." Sephiroth implored quietly.

Cloud nuzzled his beloved's neck and whispered the first romantic words that popped into his blonde head, "Waking up next to you makes me so fucking hard."

"I think there's a ghost in your room, Cloud." Sephiroth whispered back.

Cloud's eyes shot open and he clung to Sephiroth in fear. But then he realized that the small figure in the room was only Simon, Cloud's blonde, six-year-old cousin. He was standing at the entrance of Cloud's room with his finger up his nose, watching them like a silent, motionless phantom.

When Cloud finally acknowledged him with eye contact, he spoke, "Hi Cloud, you got any legos?"

Cloud let out a whoosh of air, "Jesus Christ, brat! You scared the shit out of us!"

Simon ignored the scolding in favor of more questions. "Is that guy really General Sephiroth?"

"Yes! Get out! I'll find you something to play with in a minute!" Cloud shouted.

"Promise?" Simon asked shrewdly.

"OUT."

Simon vacated the room. Almost immediately, Cloud's Aunt Judy entered, a little older than Cloud's mother, but compensated for her age by being a total slut. She paused and stared at Cloud – and more importantly, General Sephiroth.

Sephiroth was not used to civilians barging into his room uninvited, and he sat up on his elbows to scowl at the latest intrusion. The blanket slipped off of his chest to reveal the kind of smooth, chiseled male perfection that Nibelheim women convince themselves doesn't exist.

Judy smiled, "Well aren't you two a pretty picture ..."

Cloud bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Get OUT!"

Sephiroth was frozen on the bed next to him, powerless to do anything to protect his privacy or his virtue. "Who are these people?"

Cloud groaned. "The kid was my cousin, Simon. This is my Aunt Judy, his mom."

She sat herself on the corner of the bed. "And you must be General Sephiroth ..."

"Yes," Sephiroth admitted, trying to keep a respectable composure despite his annoyance, which was simmering closer to anger by the second. "I would love to get to know you, ma'am ... But maybe after I've put some clothes on?"

"They're entirely optional," She openly leered at Sephiroth's bare chest and muscular arms.

Cloud yanked the blanket up to Sephiroth's chin. Most people would have killed to see Sephiroth's nipples, and his aunt thought she was getting a free peepshow? Forget about it! "Get the hell out, and I mean it! We'll be downstairs in five minutes – with clothes on!"

"Aunt Geraldine's making egg pudding for brunch. Better hurry or you'll miss out ..." She said breezily, and then closed the door behind her.

Sephiroth sat up and rubbed his eyes in pure angst. "Baby, that little kid almost made me piss the bed, I swear to God. He was just standin' there when I woke up. I said 'Hey', and he just ... Kept standin' there ... He didn't move …"

"It could have been worse. He could have tried getting into bed with us," Cloud giggled wildly, "And I'm sure my aunt would have just loved to have gotten into bed with you!"

"Shut tha fuck up. Your family ... They're weird, you've established that. But you didn't tell me they have no boundaries."

"You didn't notice that about my mom?"

"That's your mom, though. Isn't that different?"

"Well ... I pretty much grew up with several moms, and they were all ... Awful, awful women," Cloud winced a little.

"Glad mine's dead," Sephiroth kissed Cloud's lips before kicking his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. He adjusted the waistband of his boxer briefs and stepped carefully over the large piles of childhood debris. He then quickly shoved his legs into jeans.

"Don't say that about your mom, Seph," Cloud yawned and stretched before lazily getting out of bed, too. "I promise though, they're only half serious. They love me. They'll love you."

Sephiroth was zipping an unseasonably modest black track jacket up to his throat. "Clearly."

They walked downstairs into a plume of smoke. Sitting there in the living room, each with an alcoholic beverage in one hand and a cigarette in the other, were the six blonde women that had ruled Cloud's childhood.

"Hi girls," Cloud gulped. The women all chattered sweet greetings, and smiled at the two of them expectantly. Cloud sighed and began with the polite introductions. "As you know, this is my boyfriend, Sephiroth. Sephiroth, this is my aunt Judy, who you ... Already met."

"Charmed," She commented, her eyes seeing right through Sephiroth's clothes as she took a sip of her morning martini.

Cloud ignored her, and skipped over his mother to the next blonde woman on the couch, "This is my Aunt Geraldine ..."

Geraldine was his youngest aunt, two years older than Sephiroth and with a great sense of entitlement to him, her nephew dating him and all. She took the word trampy to new heights, every inch of her screamed 'I'm going to use you before you use me', and it was all crowned with a messy blonde bob.

She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward to give Sephiroth a view of her modest, yet readily displayed rack, "Will you sign my pussy?"

"No," Sephiroth replied without changing his facial expression a centimeter.

"Why not? You're queer, what do you care?"

Cloud moved on swiftly, "Uhhh, this is my cousin Stella."

"Bella. My name's Bella, now," Stella corrected with a red-lipsticked pout. She'd left smears on her cigarette, and brought it to her lips again to smoke it angstily. She was apparently going for a goth aesthetic; her eyes were caked with black crud while her sun-kissed forearms made a mockery of the pure white foundation she'd spackled onto her face. "Hi, Mr. Sephiroth or whatever."

Stella was Cloud. From her meager height, to her slim build, to her long, slightly awkward limbs, to her flat chest, to her pretty doll face – Stella was Cloud. Cloud, plus a purposely messy blonde wig placed on top of his head. Sephiroth could barely look the teenage girl in the eye, it made him want to burst into laughter.

When Sephiroth finally got over the resemblance to his lover, he managed a friendly nod. "Hello."

Her pretty little face crumpled in a deep scowl, "Sorry you have to be here, we all know this family sucks. And my Aunt Geraldine's a complete whore."

"So are you, you skinny bitch," Geraldine shot back with a deep belch, throwing her empty beer can at the coffee table.

Judy shushed her with a coquettish giggle. "Manners, ladies."

Cloud leveled them all a glare before moving on with introductions. "This is my grandma Angela. My young grandma - " he amended to placate her.

"Grandma" was what could be considered a GILF. She wore her platinum hair carelessly tousled, and she displayed any part of her body that wasn't showing signs of age – today it was her legs. She crossed them flirtatiously, "I've heard so much about you, Sephiroth! Such an important ... Powerful man. Welcome to the family ..."

Sephiroth gave her a lifeless smile. Cloud then pulled him closer to the oldest lady in the room. "And last but not least, this is my great-grandma, Elsie."

Great-grandma was the only one in the room that actually looked her age. She was wrinkled and ancient, and clasped her little hands in joy. "I'm so glad that Cloud found such a pretty girl to bring home to us! Sephiroth's gonna make me a great-great grandma, I know she will!"

Everyone in the room froze. Sephiroth's lips parted as he attempted to wrap his mind around what had just been said.

Great-grandma nodded happily and continued, blissfully ignorant to the sudden tension in the room. "I always pictured Cloud with a beautiful, tall, sturdy woman! You have good genes, sweetheart! It's exactly what our bloodline needs!"

Grandma Angela patted her mother's hand. "Mom, I told you. Sephiroth's a man. He's practically the leader of the free world! He's Cloud's boyfriend! Cloud's gay!"

"I'm not the leader of the fre – " Sephiroth began futilely.

"Cloud's what?" Great-Great grandma Elsie cooed.

"GAY!" The other five women shouted.

Cloud felt sick.

"Oh, wonderful! Sephiroth, Cloud's great-granddaddy Strife and I were the gayest lovers this town had ever seen – before he left with that cunt from Bone City for four months. She gave him the clap, you know. Things weren't the same after that."

"Grandma!" April laughed wildly, barely able to take a drag from her cigarette. "That is not a tall girl! That's a man!"

"A what?" She asked in confusion.

"A hot slab of beef!" Geraldine shouted, cupping her hands to make her already booming voice even louder.

Great-grandma squinted at Sephiroth. "Oh, don't be silly."

Sephiroth was dumbfounded. In later years he would think to himself that that was probably the most miserable moment of his adult life. Medical torture? War? Surprise diseases from the lab? Not sleeping for days? Those trials were nothing compared to how difficult it was to not walk out of that house, get in his tank, and run it off the nearest cliff.

He was stuck with these people for life.

He looked down at Cloud, who was peering back up at him with a mixture of supreme amusement and utter remorse. Cloud's small hand found its way into his, while his gorgeous blue eyes promised that this would be laughed about later, from a safe distance – both physically and emotionally.

Before someone else could try to convince great-grandma of his masculinity, Sephiroth muttered. "It's ... okay. At least I'm a sturdy woman."

"Such a gentleman. I apologize for grandma ... She's old," Judy did her best at attempting to be pragmatic, waving her martini as though it were a geisha's fan and spilling a little on the carpet.

"Would you two like a drink? It's almost ten," April asked, getting up from the couch to take both their elbows and steer them into the kitchen. Once out of earshot, she shoved them both towards the back door. "Run while you can."

Cloud and Sephiroth both squawked, "What?"

"This is unbearable," April laughed, "I'll handle the packing, I'll hire a van or something. Consider this is your get out of jail free card."

Cloud and Sephiroth looked at each other, nerves trembling. Sephiroth's brain screamed for him to throw Cloud over his shoulder and make a hasty exit. But he knew that his exodus would have been forgiven – but never, ever forgotten. He loved Cloud. He wanted to make an effort to ... Deal with his family. If he had to be lusted over, intruded upon, and referred to as a sturdy woman, he could do that.

It was only two days.

"Well," Sephiroth finally managed to say. "... You said somethin' about the attic needin' cleanin' ... Right?"

April looked at him for a long moment, before patting his arm and smiling. "The attic's really, really filthy. It'll probably take you two most of the day."

"Oh, thank God," Cloud whispered. He then gave his mother a pleading look. "Please, please ... Can't you try to reign them in, just a little bit?"

"Couldn't even try," April told him flat out. She wasn't diluted enough to think that she didn't belong right in with them. Her mother had raised three outspoken and wild women, and nothing was ever going to change that. "Take some cereal bars and go hide in the attic."

"Guys?" Came a tiny voice.

All three jumped into the air, then turned to find little Simon standing near them, waiting to be noticed.

"Wanna play?" He asked, his little finger in his nose.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Both of their faces were caked with sweat, dirt, dust, and swatted gnats. Cloud had opened both windows in the attic, but the meager breeze did very little to distract from the heat. There were boxes upon boxes to be looked through, sorted, and discarded.

Sephiroth was certain there were spiders in his hair. He'd tied it back, but couldn't shake away the tingly feeling of bugs from his neck. He'd discarded his shirt long ago, choosing survival over modesty. The attic was wretchedly hot.

Speaking of hot, Cloud currently had a baseball cap smashed down over his hair to protect it from curious insects. With golden, damp skin, thin soccer shorts and no shirt, Sephiroth wouldn't blame any bug for wanting to crawl all over him.

They'd found treasures in the attic that afternoon. Simon had been helping them at the very start, but abandoned them when he'd discovered a box full of Cloud's old baby toys. They were a bit beneath Simon's age, but at least he could tear them apart without guilt. Then, Sephiroth came across an ancient video game system that still functioned, and a few game cartridges that Cloud had managed not to destroy. They intended to clean it up and see how it fared on eBay.

Cloud came across a few boxes of old clothes, and couldn't resist playing dress up in the horrible fashions. That is, until he found a dead rat in one of the pockets. He also found another box of records, nothing he was familiar with but was eager to try out. A fairly new box contained his school career: Yearbooks, a few papers graded B minus – the pinnacle of Cloud's academic triumph before the Academy and learning to study with Cameron – a few tiny uniforms, and several drawings and messy art projects from his early youth.

The rest of the stuff was hauled periodically down to the town dump. Most of the boxes contained holiday decorations, forgotten mementos, and stuff that the Strife packrat nature wouldn't allow them to toss until it was decayed enough to be excusable. None of it was wanted, or needed anymore.

Each member of the family took it upon themselves to intrude upon their attic haven. April brought up some chilled egg pudding when it was ready, and stood around to bark orders before she got too hot in the stuffy attic and left.

Judy brought up lemonade, her shirt tied around her bosom due to the extreme heat, of course. She spent a little time watching them go through boxes, biding her time until Sephiroth was hot enough to finally take his jacket off. Once she'd seen his sweaty, naked torso one more time, she was satisfied and left.

Geraldine came up later to collect the egg pudding dishes, and to further antagonize Sephiroth into autographing various parts of her body. Finally he caved, and with Cloud's permission, gave a very flowery signature onto her left ass cheek. She didn't want to sweat it off, so she bid them farewell.

Stella came up because she said she couldn't tolerate the company of the other women any longer, but quickly left when she realized her white face makeup was beginning to run and reveal that she wasn't in fact, a vampire.

Grandma Angela came up to offer them a couple of ice cold beers, chuckling as they both drained them in moments, then returned later with cold washcloths for their foreheads. She was far from a saint however, and demonstrated this by giving Sephiroth's butt a pinch before she finally left.

"I'm know I'm not this attractive, Cloud!" Sephiroth cried when they were alone once more. "I bet there's somethin' deficient in the Strife gene pool that translates to this animalistic attraction to me. Maybe I have like, some sort of chemical that you guys lack, and you can smell it on me because I'm sweating a lot. Ya think? Baby?"

Cloud didn't answer. He was too busy studying a trail of sweat as it slowly worked it's way down Sephiroth's chest, his ribs, stomach, and finally trailed below the edge of his pants and was blotted out of existence. Cloud dreamily reached out and ran his finger down the salty line it had left behind on his lover's skin.

Then he blinked, coming back to reality, "… Huh? What'd you say? I blanked out for a second."

Sephiroth just shook his head with a bemused smile. "Forget it."

Great-grandma couldn't make it up the latter, but yelled up into the attic, wanting verification that Cloud wasn't taking advantage of Sephiroth. Two young sweethearts all alone in a private space with raging hormones was a major temptation.

"I don't want Sephiroth ending up like all the unwed sluts in this family!" Great-grandma declared.

They were a little buzzed from the beers at that point, and Sephiroth called down in the most girlish falsetto that he could possibly muster: "Ohh, Cloud! Fuck my pussy harder!"

Thankfully, Great-grandma was oblivious due to her poor hearing, but left happily when Cloud popped his head down to ensure that his big, bad penis was steering clear of Sephiroth's flowery womanhood.

The sun began to set, and they were losing light. Any other forgotten treasures were simply discarded at that point. After giving the space a quick once over with a broom, the attic was as clean as it was ever going to get. Cloud didn't bother with putting on any of his discarded clothes, but before descending the ladder, Sephiroth shook any possible spiders out of his jacket and threw it on without zipping it.

When they got downstairs, the girls were waiting, wanting to bring them along for a dinner out. A "dinner out" in Nibelheim consisted of beer and possibly a grilled cheese sandwich and fries if the pub keeper felt like cooking that night. It was less than desirable at that point.

"We're tired and hungry!" Cloud wailed. "We've been working all day!"

"We've been doing stuff, too!" Geraldine shouted, stumbling a bit. Apparently their idea of working was to finish off the liquor supply in the house, and perhaps pack a few boxes in between cocktails.

"If they don't have to go, I don't wanna go!" Stella was complaining.

Sephiroth cleared his throat pointedly. The ladies, Cloud, and even Simon looked up at his looming figure.

"We'll be happy to go."

Cloud balked while his aunts rejoiced. "What?"

In the pub, under the influence of a little bit of beer and peanuts, Sephiroth draped himself over Cloud. He was loathe to leave his side, and kissed him any chance he could. He flaunted their relationship to the entire bar – hell, the entire town. He flaunted how much he adored Cloud to his aunts, his mother, and anyone else he cared to look.

It had a surprising effect on Cloud's family. Face to face with the stunning General's unavoidable homosexuality, they were forced to look past his sexuality altogether. The bonus was seeing how happy he was making Cloud. And so, Cloud's family got to know him. Even Geraldine put her pussy away and talked to him as a human being.

They all got drunk.

April wanted Sephiroth to marry her son. Judy wanted to know when she could visit them all on the other continent. Grandma Angela said they reminded her of her first dead husband. Great-grandma Strife couldn't stop admiring the happy lovebirds. Simon thought it was pretty weird that two boys were kissing. Stella said that the attention they attracted was embarrassing, but admitted after a few cocktails that Sephiroth would make a good vampire lover.

In the wee hours of the morning, they crawled back into bed and snuggled close. Cloud's heart came undone, and he whispered in the dark, "You're so perfect. I don't even know how you do these things. Just … Thanks so much for showing my family everything I love about you. Thank you."

Sephiroth kissed his lover on the forehead, and whispered, "… Didn't I tell you those bitches would be eatin' my shit?"

Cloud was quiet for several moments. Then, he whispered back, "… You're evil."

"Are you just figurin' this out?"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

The next morning, Sephiroth was the one to wake Cloud up with soft kisses across his side of face.

"Happy Birthday Cloud," He murmured. "I love you."

"I love you too … Evil man …" Cloud smiled dreamily, rolling in Sephiroth's arm to face him.

They certainly didn't plan to have sex in April's home, but sometimes it was a force of nature that could not be denied. They were as quiet as they could possibly manage, but Sephiroth didn't care if April heard or not. Cloud just prayed in the back of his mind, and managed to stay utterly silent as he writhed underneath Sephiroth's body, holding him close with both legs.

Somehow, the taboo location only made it all the better. Cloud couldn't deny how utterly surreal and wonderful it was to have Sephiroth make love to him in his own bed. It made the fact that he was dating the General all the more real. And Sephiroth knew for a fact he was making Cloud's childhood dreams come true, which only fueled his desire to do so.

After a brief shower, they descended the stairs to find April frosting a homemade chocolate cake. The kitchen was the last room in the house to be boxed up, and she had managed to dirty up most of the items in there to construct the delicious creation.

Cloud swiped at it with his fingertip to taste. "OH!"

"Don't fucking touch it, it's for your party," April nearly whispered as she artfully put on the finishing touches of tiny flowery swirls in the cocoa frosting. She then neatly moved more frosting over the bald spot Cloud had created.

Cloud's nose continued to delicately sniff the air like a tempted kitten, "But it's mine, and it's for my birthday party ... And I say let's have a piece right now!"

"You're not a baby anymore, you can wait until later!" April barked sternly, before she softened and craned her neck to place a sweet kiss on her son's cheek. "… My handsome seventeen-year-old man."

Cloud blushed despite himself and turned away. "So what's for breakfast?"

"The sky's the limit," April said grandiosely, which was Cloud's cue to get off his ass and make something for himself.

He shrugged at Sephiroth and began to rummage through the fridge. "What are you in the mood for?"

"Scrambled eggs? Toast?" Sephiroth suggested.

"No thanks grandpa," Cloud disagreed. "How about some cinnamon rolls?"

"Sure thing grandma," Sephiroth replied.

Cloud's mother snorted. "You two are a couple of hams."

When they were done cooking breakfast, April did the dishes while the boys packed the kitchen. By mid afternoon, the task was complete. They moved what April was taking to her new apartment to Sephiroth's tank, which was really only a few boxes. Cloud was also bringing his record player and collection, plus another box of mementos and clothes.

Various neighbors and family members then collected the furniture and remaining items. Sephiroth and Cloud hauled the last of the trash to the town dump, and dropped off the donatable items at the church that they never went to.

The house was empty.

Cloud's seventeenth birthday party was small, simple, and consisted of his family members sitting in the vacant living room with takeout boxes and cake on Styrofoam plates. Cloud received small gifts, a little bit of money and a bottle of his favorite Nibelheim whiskey. They sat by the fireplace and enjoyed each other's company if for the last time.

Cloud's family eventually filed out, and one by one, all the vivacious and odd women he was related to kissed his cheeks and forehead, and wished him safety in the army. April's mother, grandmother and sisters all hugged her next, wishing her the best in Junon. Then, they all insisted on hugging and kissing Sephiroth. Only Geraldine's hand slipping down to feel his ass, and he forgave her.

Once they were out the door, April was already going up to her room, where she was going to cruise on a sleeping bag, "I'm fucking exhausted, and that guy's gonna be here around seven to pick up the keys to the house. Then we've got a hell of a long drive. Get some sleep."

Cloud called up the stairs, "It's only nine!"

She was grumpy enough to call down, "If you're gonna be up all night, go outside! Otherwise shut up and be quiet!"

"We're not noisy!" Cloud prodded.

"I know what you did this morning!" She declared before slamming her door shut.

"…We'll be quiet, ma'am!" Cloud called back sheepishly.

"I noticed your porch swing," Sephiroth told him quietly. "Wanna go outside?"

"If you want."

Cloud had never noticed how... romantic the mountain sky looked at night from his front porch. At least not without Sephiroth nearby, who always made stars shine brighter and music sound better. There was so much wonder in the universe, and that evening it was all on blatant display.

Sephiroth was already staring up, and took a seat on the swing with a half cooled coffee cup in hand. Cloud pushed the swing chair with his knee, eliciting a small chuckle from Sephiroth before he sat down beside him.

Once they'd fully appreciated night sky in silence, Sephiroth spoke. "Sorry it wasn't a better birthday."

"Are you insane?" Cloud smiled. "This was the best one, yet."

"You worked for most of it," Sephiroth pointed out. "Next week, you won't lift a fuckin' finger. You don't even have to walk if you don't wanna, I'll carry you everywhere."

Cloud grinned in silence, and draped his legs over Sephiroth's lap. They cuddled close, enjoying the mild night and each other's warmth. Cloud was very nearly asleep when Sephiroth shifted, "Hey baby, lemme get up for a minute."

"Why? We're comfortable," Cloud whined.

"I have presents for you."

"What? No!" Cloud cried, coming awake. He'd clearly stated that Sephiroth not give him any tangible gifts on his birthday, since he was paying for the entire second part of their beach vacation the following week. It was more than enough, and all he wanted.

"Shut it," Sephiroth said, and went to his tank with the veil of mountain darkness on his side. Cloud couldn't make out what he'd retrieved, but he returned with both hands behind his back.

"Seph, what'd you get me?" Cloud moaned.

Slowly, one of Sephiroth's arms appeared, and produced a long, thin tube that was wrapped in red paper. He swung it teasingly. "You sure you don't want it?"

"Is that …" Cloud's eyes went wide. "Is that your recruitment poster?"

"Maybe."

"GIMME!" Cloud cried.

Sephiroth easily held it above Cloud's reach, especially since he was too lazy to get off the swing. Finally, Sephiroth leaned down and puckered his lips. "Kiss me first."

Cloud pressed a sweet kiss onto his lips, but Sephiroth did not relinquish the poster. "Please gimme! Will I the first one to get one of these?"

"Yup."

Cloud laughed, still trying to reach it. "Ya know, it's pretty pathetic. People usually gift pictures of themselves to other people as a gag in sitcoms."

Sephiroth gave him a cheeky grin, "Well, this one's gonna be sold in stores …"

"Sold?" Cloud paused.

"I have news," Sephiroth announced. "The boss thought recruitment numbers would go up if we did somethin' a little more modern than just recruitment posters at post offices. Ya know?"

"Yeah," Cloud nodded. "What are you doing instead?"

"… Me, Genesis and Angeal … We each got our own cover of Rollin' Stone. It's goin' on stands next month."

"… What?" Cloud was numb with shock.

"Yeah … They interviewed us over the phone last week."

"… You didn't tell me this?" Cloud leapt out of the swing and attacked Sephiroth with a bear hug, forgetting all about the gift. "This is such a huge deal! Tell me everything!"

"I will, I will. One thing I wanted to say first, is that they asked a few questions about you," Sephiroth smiled uneasily. "I'm almost positive there's gonna be a picture of you in there. Are you okay with this?"

"Sweet Jesus!" Cloud nearly fainted. "I'm gonna have a mention in Rolling Stone?"

"And …" Sephiroth took a breath, and showed Cloud his other hand, which was holding a thin gift that was clearly a wrapped magazine. "As a favor for doin' the article … I was able to get you this. Open it first."

Cloud unwrapped it in a frenzy, expecting to find Sephiroth's new issue of Rolling Stone hot off the press before it went on stands.

It was not Sephiroth's issue. Cloud was unable to believe his eyes. It was the extremely rare and prized, impossible to find, shit your pants issue of Rolling Stone from '74.

The coveted Anal Orgasm issue. Signed. By the entire band. With the original drummer that overdosed, not the bald guy they got to tour with them in the '80's.

Cloud began to sob, and held it against his chest, unable to even look at it. It was too much. "… I'm … I need to sit down."

He fell back onto the swing with a heavy creak, and swung for a moment. Sephiroth leaned against the porch railing, watching him with a patient smile. "Happy tears?"

"Shocked, crazy, disbelieving tears," Cloud managed to say, blinking rapidly. "How the fuck … Did you get this?"

"They had an old issue signed by the drummer back in the day in their vault. The people at the magazine got the rest of the band to sign it for you. Did you read it?"

Cloud looked at it again, almost afraid a sudden fire would sweep by and destroy it. He realized the original drummer's signature was much more faded and old than the rest. Benny and the rest of the band's signatures were much more dark and crisp, new. They had signed it, 'To Cloud Strife, our biggest fan, may the next seventeen years bring you many more anal orgasms! XOXOXO'

For most of his life, Cloud couldn't even afford Rolling Stone, and begged his mother to buy them for him so he might catch a glimpse of either Anal Orgasm news, or even Sephiroth. Now Sephiroth, his boyfriend was going to be on the cover, and he was in possession of possibly the most badass issue, signed by the most badass band in the entire history of creation.

Cloud began to cry anew, trying to speak but unable to articulate any sort of words. All he could do was squeak through hot, stinging tears of ultimate ecstasy.

Sephiroth stood up and spread his arms wide, "… And the band's all here, right now! Come on out, guys!"

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Cloud clutched his chest.

"Just kidding!" Sephiroth guffawed. "Holy shit, please don't pass out baby, I'm just kiddin'!"

That managed to break the heavy atmosphere of receiving such a life changing gift, and Cloud laughed until his sides hurt. Sephiroth got on his knees and hugged him, "I didn't think givin' you this stupid magazine was gonna almost kill you, I'm sorry!"

"Oh God Sephiroth … It's just amazing, that's all."

Sephiroth then handed over the poster. Cloud held his already cherished magazine in his lap, and opened it with a smile.

Sephiroth was going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone in black and white, which was fitting. 'The Generals Of The Shin-Ra Army Speak Out' was the issue's headline in bold red font, underscored by, 'Sephiroth, Angeal and Genesis tell us why YOU should be joining up this year'. The other big news of the issue concerned Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

Cloud finally let his eyes feast on the image they'd chosen of Sephiroth. The light was hitting his cheekbones perfectly, and his skin looked flawless. His eyes were narrow, and piercing in the black and white image. He was also shirtless, tattoo was on display … And he had both gloved middle fingers raised in defiance.

The very last photo of the entire shoot, the fun one. The one the entire crew burst out into laughter at. The fluke. It was more honest than any other shot of the day. Sephiroth looked confident, and his mouth was almost smirking, but not quite.

Cloud didn't say anything for several moments. He finally looked at Sephiroth.

The glimmer of mischief had left his bright green eyes, and he stared up at Cloud with a mixture of trepidation and fear.

He began talking, "I tried to get 'em to use a different picture. I even talked to one of my buddies in legal to fight it, but Shin-Ra, my boss, hand picked this one. Says it's got edge. Isn't just pretty. Shows who I really am, not who I pretend to be. I dunno about that bullshit, Cloud. I dunno about anything. I wanted – needed to show you first. Not even Gen or Angeal know about this. I needed to show you first because I know you're gonna give it to me straight. Don't tell me it's a cool picture, or that it's gonna bring in numbers because I already know it's cool and I already know it's gonna bring in numbers.

"What I care more about is … Is this gonna ruin my career?"

"No Seph," Cloud shook his head, and carefully began to reroll his new favorite poster. "… You're gonna be a fucking legend."

\- END PART ONE -

A/N

Chapter image here! http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/#/d33k797

NEW! Seph's poster is now here http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d33x1xj

Finished chapter 12 doujinshi here! http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/#/d336ist

1 – WARNING : SEPH ON BOTTOM! Oops, this warning might have come too late. Well, get over it because there's gonna be more. And don't say 'uke' or 'seme' to me, ever. There's nothing 'weak' or 'girlish' about taking a peepee up your butt. Have you tried it lately? You gotta be pretty tough to handle that garbage. Hats off to bottoms, switches, and even occasional switches because they do the Lord's work. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

2 – I've gotten tons of messages wondering if I've died, given up on this story, or have withheld it in a bunker somewhere because I'm mean and hateful. You silly bitches, I've been abroad for five months! I went to Ireland to live for the summer, then to explore the British Isles, and then to Scandinavia to find myself. Instead, I found catty roommates and new thresholds of my personal levels of disgust i.e. walking for days on three times over popped blisters on the bottom of my feet, scavenging Tesco reductions sections for food, and pretending that Ireland and the UK's problem with males having hairy backs doesn't bother me that much (it does, ugh, that's not right). I'm an evolved human now dudes and dudettes, and in exchange for crazy times, Blonde Ambition had to wait for a little while. Follow me on Deviant Art if you want the scoop on my life, otherwise wait patiently little birdies! I'll not let you go hungry forever!

3 – With the help of a new beta, I'm in the process of remastering the story in celebration of the first part being completed! If you go back to reread, you might notice that things are a lot more polished. Don't waste time looking for differences in the story though; it's just been reedited for punctuation, grammar, formatting, and general dumbassery. Man, I'm italic-happy. Why didn't you guys ever tell me to chill out on that shit?

3 – I've said it before, but I really don't know how to respond to most of the messages I get. You humble me, and make me feel weird and socially awkward and look at my feet a lot. I dunno what to say guys, we're all having fun here and I'm SO glad you're still enjoying it so much. I can't thank you except to continue, forge on into new frontiers, and draw things for you. Remember Chapter 12 in the dressing room? I've made it into a doujinshi for you guys, you can check it out at the link above, as well as some other goodies and chapter images. Don't hesitate to message me or comment, because I read every one of them and always smile, and NEVER know just what to say. Don't ever feel like you can't message me for any reason, whether it's a suggestion, or a comment, or a complaint, or you just wanna talk.

4 – Knock on wood … But did you know that I have never, ever been flamed for this or any story I've written? Man, that's a rad feeling. And ya know what? Even if I was ever flamed, it would be one bad comment in a fucking sea of love. Thanks for making this into such a special, enjoyable project, as well as my other stories.

6 – It's been THREE YEARS, guys! Three years of squirrelly Cloud and nerdy Sephiroth. Here's to another three. I'll keep writing forever as long as you keep reading it.

7 – Love, Jennifer 3


	25. PART TWO : Keeping it Wet

"Goodbye fuckers!" Cloud called from the window as Sephiroth made their getaway out of godforsaken Nibelheim. Anyone who happened to be outside was subject to a heartfelt farewell from the sentimental young man. "See you later! I'll miss you! I don't even like you, but I'll miss you!"

They managed to get caught at one of the tiny town's ancient stoplights, and watched as a group of young children crossed the street, marching off to some mid-summer adventure with their bikes in tow. Cloud fell back against the seat to roll up the window when a teenage girl jogged past the tank.

Cloud gasped and leaned out of the open window. Huge tits, shiny brown hair, legs for days and a supermodel's vacant stare? Could it be? "Tifa Lockheart!"

She shot an inquisitive glance over her shoulder at the tank before she realized who was hanging halfway out of it. "… Cloud?"

"Who else? Come here you big slut!" Cloud cried, arms outstretched.

She quickly bounced up to the side of the tank, and stood on her tiptoes to meet Cloud in a hug. "Hey! I saw you in the paper! You were at the Northern Crater battle! You're a hero!"

Cloud blushed beet red, "Well… uh, not so much, I just helped out a little bit… How are you?"

"I'm great! Nothing's really changed here, you know it never does. Are you doing okay? Do you like Midgar?" She gushed, reaching up to ruffle Cloud's hair like everyone so often did at school. Although, the touch was far gentler than it ever used to be.

"Oh, yeah! I totally love it there! My mom's moving out to Junon to be closer to me, so we're here to fetch her…" There was a moment of relative quiet between them, and Cloud appraised his childhood girlcrush, who had clearly become a woman during his time away. He inwardly wondered if he looked any more like a man in her eyes.

He almost wondered why he would even care what this popular, vain, rich bitch thought... but realized that Tifa didn't deserve any bitterness at all. She deserved better than a short, gay boyfriend, and he clearly required the guiding hand of a blindingly handsome army General.

There was nothing but a few awkward, yet happy moments between them from their childhood, so he blurted words he'd been holding in since he was a little boy : "Tifa, I just have to tell you—you are so pretty. You're like Audrey Hepburn with a fantastic rack. And you look even better than ever!"

Tifa instantly turned red and began to bury his compliment under nervous babble, "What are you fucking talking about? I'm sweaty and gross right now and haven't even washed my hair in two days… but thank you, I guess. You look really cute, too! Your hair looks so good like that! Do you have a Facebook or anything? We have a lot to catch up on!"

"Yeah, I'll friend you!" Cloud promised. "Anything scandalous happen at school?"

Sephiroth touched Cloud's back, "Light's green, babe. Your mom's givin' me a dirty look."

Cloud looked back and saw his mother scowling at them from inside her own car, which she was using to follow them to Junon. As usual when faced with an early morning, a long drive or any combination thereof, she was being a complete bitch. She honked once for emphasis.

Cloud waved dismissively at her. There was nobody else on the road that they were holding up, so he rested on his perch from Sephiroth's tank and smiled down at his former… well, they were never really friends. But she was easily the hottest girl in Nibelheim, and if there was anyone from this town he wanted to be friends with as an adult, it was her.

Big, squishy tits. Elitist, sassy attitude. Rich father. Tifa Lockheart was the perfect fag hag.

"MOVE YOUR FAT ASSES," Cloud's mother boomed demonically.

"We should probably go, we have to drive all day as it is," Cloud tsked, and reached down to give Tifa another light hug.

"Who's driving this thing?" Tifa asked, looking up and down the unusual vehicle.

Cloud turned to look at Sephiroth, and smiled warmly. "The most gorgeous man in the whole world."

Sephiroth gave Cloud a dim, patient smile. It was just a little too early to cause Sephiroth to laugh or flirt back; instead he just continued to rest his head against his seat.

Tifa cooed, "Oh, is it your boyfriend?" Then she whispered, "I wanna see what he looks like!"

Despite a series of elongated honks from Cloud's mother, he opened his door and hopped down, laughing when he was face to face with his former crush. He'd grown a little taller, but so had she, and they saw directly eye-to-eye. They could even share clothes.

Perfect hag! he thought, giving her another hug for the hell of it. He then pointed up into the car, allowing Tifa to peek up at Sephiroth.

The ethereal beauty was tired, but no less stunning than usual. With his silver hair flowing over one shoulder and his lidded, electric green eyes, he looked like a God slumming it for the weekend. All he had on were tight track pants and a thin t-shirt stretched over his perfectly sculpted torso. He was tapping the wheel, and the light movement created a ripple through the coiled muscles of his forearms.

Cloud and Tifa peered up at him like two awestruck and reverent mice, neither saying a word. Sephiroth finally gave the teenage girl a nod, "Good morning."

"Oh, this is Tifa," Cloud introduced, coming out of his trance. "Tifa, this is Sephiroth. My... man."

"...Hi. Nice to meet you…" She replied meekly, and backed away. She turned to Cloud, and her delicate eyebrows rose high on her forehead to give him a meaningful gaze that could only translate to, "That's some mighty good dick you're getting."

Cloud nodded as if to say, "I know, right?"

By this time, April Strife was laying on her horn and shouting Nibelheim obscenities that didn't quite make sense in English. One of them being, "Get the fucking goat off the goddamn mountain before I fucking splatter it all over the windshield!"

"Go, go, go," Tifa pushed his arm. "I'm so glad I actually got out of bed to jog today, otherwise I wouldn't have run into you."

"And I wouldn't have run into your tits," Cloud batted his eyes innocently. It was Tifa's fault for parading around in nothing but a sports bra; it would be bad manners not to pay his respects to the only boobs on Earth he'd ever considered motorboating.

She crossed her arms defensively, "I'm telling your grandma you said that!"

"Bye honey, talk to you soon!" Cloud called as he climbed up into the vehicle, and Tifa waved before putting her headphones back on and resuming her jog. She must have bought her sports bra at the same store Sephiroth bought his boxer briefs to run in, because they controlled the bounce nicely. Between Tifa's tits and Sephiroth's balls, Cloud momentarily lamented his lack of bouncy attributes, completely ignorant to the fact that he could barely blink without every hair on his head swaying like feathers.

April was still screaming when Cloud put his window up. Sephiroth stepped on the gas and began to haul ass out of town without saying a word. Cloud peeked at him, wondering if he was put on the spot by the sudden stop. "... Hey Pretty. Sorry if that was awkward."

Sephiroth shook his head slightly as he resumed driving. "No problem. It's cute when you introduce people to me."

"Why's it cute?" Cloud whined, bouncing energetically in his seat. Somehow, he'd become quite the morning person. Or perhaps he was simply excited to be embarking on a vacation, a new year as a seventeen-year-old, and the reality of a whole day to listen to music in a moving car.

"Because you do it like I'm your well-trained dog," Sephiroth chuckled softly. "I feel like I should do a fuckin' trick or somethin'."

"Oh…" Cloud pondered seriously on that for a moment. He did somewhat enjoy showing Sephiroth off, only because he loved him and he was obviously an ideal man. "It doesn't bother you does it? I mean I—"

"If it bothered me, you would know it," Sephiroth cut him off and reached for a thermos of coffee he'd prepared for the morning. His long throat pulsed softly as he drank, and Cloud wondered how a creature could be so alluring no matter what he did. He was so distracted that he was slightly startled when Sephiroth spoke again to conclude his point, "Besides, I know the score by now. I am your well-trained dog."

Cloud reached over to pat the top of Sephiroth's head, "You're a good boy, Sephy! Even if you do bite…"

That earned him a show of Sephiroth's big, sexy teeth, supplemented by a guttural bark. An electric current passed between them, and Cloud didn't want to let on how intensely those feral noises made him want to crawl over the stick shift and do unladylike things to him. So instead Cloud focused on finding something to listen to on the radio.

Cloud was right about one thing: Making it down the side of Mt. Nibelheim was a lot easier than crawling up. With the handy trick of laying off the brakes and keeping the wheel turned, Sephiroth successfully sailed the tank down the spiraling road safely and quickly. Once that obstacle was tackled, it was a five-hour drive across the Western continent, a three-hour ferry across the sea where they were able to stretch out and enjoy some lunch, and then another three hours to Junon.

Cloud had never been to Junon before. It had a much different vibe than Midgar, it was just as large but it seemed so much cleaner and purer of a place despite the metal industrial surroundings. April's new neighborhood easily dwarfed the entire town of Nibelheim, and to look at her in these surroundings just… made sense.

Midgar was large, but it was also made small by the sheer number of people bumping around in it. Buildings crowded close together, and smog choked the air. Cloud adored that chaos, was born to be submerged in noise and movement.

But much like April was more laid back, Junon was like an industrial older brother of the city, just as large in size with the added feature of breathing room. The warm wind permeated the seaside city with the relaxing scent of the beach, and Cloud found himself wiggling his toes inside his shoes. He liked that his mother would be dwelling in such a place, and knew she'd find a good man in one of the locals.

Hopefully, he'd be fucking rich. And hot! And maybe they'd even make a baby. Cloud smiled, thinking of how nice it would be to be an adult older brother to some little boy or girl. He'd be a great mentor, for he knew much about the world, music, life, love, and the mysterious nature of the infinite universe. He'd never have any children of his own, so he could be a surrogate to his brother or sister and bestow his wisdom.

If April had the power to read minds, she probably would have run Cloud over with her car. He had no right to make lofty plans for her ovaries, much less impart wisdom of what he knew about life - which summed up to absolutely everything about absolutely nothing in April's opinion.

The boys carried in April's things, and she gave them a grand tour of her new apartment. She'd visited it once already, and it was already full of furniture so new that it was all wrapped in plastic, fresh from the warehouse.

The whole place reeked of newness, and the scent aroused Sephiroth's decorating sensibilities until he could no longer contain himself. He found himself saying, "Ape, do you like the color pistachio? We should do an accent wall, I think it'd really set off the mocha motif you've got going with the carpet and the leather furniture. It's real leather, isn't it? We can get it reupholstered if it isn't. Can I bring over some swatches sometime?"

The Strifes both looked at him like he was a crazy person, so he reeled it back a little bit. The apartment included two full bathrooms and a guest bedroom, which she specifically had gotten for Cloud to come and stay in. There was also a terrace for smoking, a small bar, and an even a sliver of the ocean visible between the metal landscape.

April walked around the place at ease, already at home.

"Why didn't you do this years ago?" Cloud asked, lazily draped on a section of her new couch that was still wrapped tight in plastic.

"I didn't want to uproot you from your school," She explained, sitting on the floor next to the open glass door and smoking. "From your family, from… well, everything."

"Thanks a lot," Cloud said dryly, resting his eyes for the moment.

"I guess…" April thought aloud, tapping ash into a new tray. "Maybe I needed some encouragement. You moving out here was the push I needed, I suppose. Nibelheim got really small without you around. And knowing that you're taken care of, doing well on your own… seemed like it was time take care of myself."

Cloud smiled, and chose not to say anything else on the subject. He was glad his mom was living a larger life, and it didn't matter what she did to get herself there. He wouldn't ever criticize that woman for any of her life choices, because she'd lived it for his benefit from her own late childhood. It was high time that April took care of herself, and this move was a fantastic start.

A small buzzing sound stole Cloud's attention, and he glanced to the other end of the couch. Sephiroth had fallen dead asleep, and was snoring softly.

Cloud smirked at his mother, "Mind if we grab a nap before we take off?"

"Go ahead," April sighed, lazily pushing herself up off the floor. "But if I hear you two idiots doing anything naughty you're getting thrown out. Nobody's christening my new place before I do."

"Gross!" Cloud cried in insult.

"What's really gross is having to hear my own son and his boyfr—"

"You heard nothing!" Cloud screeched, causing Sephiroth to shoot awake. The poor man blinked with bleary eyes, the normally electrified green irises were dim and cloudy. Cloud sat up and rubbed Sephiroth's shoulder, "Poor sleepyhead. You wanna get in the bed in my room and take a little nap?"

"No," Sephiroth shook his head and straightened his back with a pop. "I just need coffee, a lot of it."

"And fall asleep behind the wheel with my son in the car? Forget it," April interjected. "You've been driving all day. It's past eight, and it's almost dark. You're both sleeping here."

"But we have a schedule…" Sephiroth's voice was defensive, but there was clearly room in his self-imposed logic for correction.

"Fuck the schedule. You're not going anywhere tonight," April decided. "Cloud, there are some new sheets in the hall closet. Go make your bed up and be quick about it. Sephiroth, I don't care if you're some General or whatever. If you're gonna be in this family, you're gonna listen to me from time to time. You both worked hard all weekend, you drove all day today and you need a good night's sleep. Then, tomorrow morning you can run off and do whatever it is you're going to do for the rest of your vacation. You got me?"

Sephiroth stopped listening halfway through, because he knew he wasn't going to argue with her motherly logic. In fact, a true vacation from his duties did include not having to stick to any schedules, and not having to be the one in charge. To stick to a self-imposed schedule when he clearly wanted to do otherwise was not a vacay at all. He was once again inclined to let a tiny member of the Strife clan boss him around—they seemed to know what was good for him.

"You had me at 'Fuck the schedule,'" He told her, and let Cloud take his hand and lead him to the guest room. He leaned against the wall and watched Cloud make the bed for them, then let his shorter lover undress him. They didn't feel like getting their bags from the tank, so they slept naked under the crisp, cool sheets.

He had the falling sensation of deep relaxation the moment Cloud shut off the lights. He felt his lover's compact body curl beside him, and the last thing he heard was Cloud mutter with a chuckle, "Goddamn bossy woman. You're not pissed we have to stay here, are you? Isn't she a total bitch?"

Sephiroth snorted, a shadow of the true humor he felt. He was sleepy enough and honest enough to murmur against the pillow, "… I wish she was my mom."

Cloud was surprised initially, but softened in agreement. He was lucky to have April as his mother, and she was mother enough for the both of them. Cloud kissed Sephiroth's temple, "…She is your mom, now."

Sephiroth then fell into unconsciousness with the feeling of soft, warm kisses being placed across the side of his face.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Emerging from the blue water, Sephiroth snapped his goggles onto his forehead and closed his eyes, giving himself a moment to breathe.

It wasn't that he'd come up too quickly, it was just a completely different world underwater, and he'd been down there most of the afternoon. He'd found a decent spot and sat down on the ocean floor, looking up as the jellyfish migrated several feet above his head. He got stung once or twice, but only because he couldn't resist touching them. It didn't feel like much of anything, perhaps a slight tickle that a quick cure snuffed out.

He'd been under the surface for about four hours, and all the swimming had him ravenously hungry. When his stomach growled he opened his eyes, finally adjusting to the bright sun and salty air as he got his bearings back. Less than fifty feet away was his favorite person in the entire world.

Cloud was shameless. Like a teenage girl who undoes her bikini top to avoid tan lines, he had taken off his Speedo, which was instead resting on his head to shield his eyes from the sun while he napped the afternoon away. Several empty cans of beer were rattling weightlessly inside the plastic bag they'd brought from the hotel room, the tinkle of metal was the only real noise besides the crashing of the waves.

Sephiroth discarded his scuba gear as he approached, hearing also a little muffled roar from Cloud's ear buds, along with a gentle snore. It seemed his sunscreen had been keeping him golden instead of burnt, but his normally creamy white ass looked just a little bit rosy.

Not that that was a bad thing. In fact, it looked extremely inviting. He considered slapping it to wake Cloud up, but went for a less abrupt approach.

He snapped his hair band instead of going through the motions of unraveling it all, and with his hair free, Sephiroth sat on a vacant corner of Cloud's towel. He held the wet rope of his hair over Cloud's back, and squeezed a few cold drops on his moist, golden skin.

No reaction. Sephiroth snickered softly and wrung out more cold ocean water onto Cloud's back. This time his naked little ass perked a little, and there was a break in the pattern of his snoring.

Now that Sephiroth had his attention he twisted hair, letting a heavy stream come splashing down. The blonde jerked on the towel, and snatched the Speedo off of his head to glare at the intrusion upon his oasis.

When he saw that it was Sephiroth, he scowled. "Quit it!"

"No way," Sephiroth said with the edge of seriousness, and used both hands to wring water onto Cloud, who squirmed and rolled over. From the looks of his slightly pinkish genitals, he'd been lying out on his back already. "You're burnin' my toys, I won't be able to play with 'em tonight."

"I don't burn," Cloud remarked with a lazy stretch, and shut his MP3 player off. He wasn't even near drunk, but just careless enough to spread his legs to give Sephiroth a generous view of his situation. His legs easily lifted and his fingers lazily moved across his tight ass, and spread it open. "... See?"

Sephiroth gave a quick peek up and down the coastline. All clear, even of hotels, as the beach had been kept completely natural, unlike the overly constructed and tourist-ridden Costa Del Sol area. No people around, no voyeurs in windows, no Turk helicopters looming in distant skies…

With the very tip of his tongue, Sephiroth licked a line up from the crevice of Cloud's body, and hummed with the taste of his sweat, and a slight tingle of sunscreen on his skin. It masked Cloud's natural flavor and wasn't entirely pleasant, so he refrained from that and instead bent over Cloud to kiss his mouth.

"You're getting me all wet," Cloud complained as Sephiroth straddled his hips.

"Is there something about you I don't know?"

"Jesus, you're gross," Cloud lamented, but couldn't resist wrapping his arms around Sephiroth's cool, slippery form. The black, skintight wetsuit was as hot as leather on his boyfriend, and the little goggles on his forehead were too precious to bear. Cloud looked down and saw that the flippers had already been discarded. "How was Sephiroth's underwater mermaid adventure?"

"Beautiful," He answered with a surprising amount of earnesty.

Cloud softened beneath him and smiled. "…Good."

"I'm hungry and horny," Sephiroth said, roughly thrusting his hips a few times against Cloud just to make him squeal and giggle. "Let's go back to the room."

Cloud hugged Sephiroth with his entire body before squirming out from under him. He pulled his suit back on, narrowly missing a spank on his pink ass in the process. He then pulled on a stolen, loose pair of Cameron's jeans that he'd cut off at the knees, and a wife beater.

Sephiroth stretched like a cat before sitting up and pulling his wet, slippery diving suit off of himself. Muscles moved under skin, and soon Cloud's lover was dripping wet and standing in the sand in a pair of snug fitting swimming trunks. They were tight enough to not bunch under a wetsuit, but loose enough to at least leave just a little bit to the imagination. They clung perfectly to Sephiroth's long, sinewy frame.

Cloud pressed himself to Sephiroth's side, effectively soaking his dry clothes but he hardly cared. "You look so sexy right now."

"I do?" Sephiroth asked innocently with a quirk of his lips.

Cloud wondered if his jaw would ever stop dropping at the sight of Sephiroth smiling, stripping, fucking, coming, or doing any little random, mundane thing. The man was an angel, and possessed a kind of beauty one never got used to, or became numbed by from exposure. Sephiroth would always make Cloud's heart throb.

He couldn't answer the question without sounding like an idiot, so instead Cloud giggled, trying not to be hidden behind any stupid blush or veil of shyness. It all translated into a charming expression of coy possessiveness. "Yup. And you're all mine."

The hotel room a small affair with a tiny kitchen and a black and white television set, but the bathroom was to die for. Not many tubs were large enough to allow Sephiroth to stretch all the way out, but this one was big enough for both of them to lay together in the never ending supply of hot water.

Bubbles weren't necessary, especially since Sephiroth required so much shampoo and conditioner to keep his tresses tangle free. He worked the salt water out of his hair while Cloud lay opposite him, scrubbing the sand out from between his toes.

"Christ. I never noticed your long ass monkey toes. You could climb a tree without using your hands," Sephiroth commented, enjoying the way Cloud went red and immediately shoved his foot beneath the water's surface.

"Don't look at my feet," he said defensively.

"Is that why you wear socks all the fuckin' time? To hide your monkey toes?" Sephiroth violently felt beneath the water for either of Cloud's feet to retrieve.

Cloud screamed; every single part of his body was suddenly electrified with ticklishness. Sephiroth's strength easily overcame his defenses and his foot was pulled up out of the water. Cloud kicked wildly, but Sephiroth was in no danger of being struck.

He very seriously and thoroughly pondered Cloud's feet for several moments, which were flexing and straining to pull away, unwittingly displaying his long toes quite clearly. "Very odd. Very odd indeed."

"Sephiroth! Lemme go!" Cloud cried, practically drowning himself in order to break away.

"They're way too long. I'll shorten them for you. Okay?" Sephiroth offered in false earnesty. He opened his mouth and gently nibbled the wiggling toes, causing Cloud to scream bloody murder.

"Seph! No! Noo!" Cloud laughed and screamed until it hurt, but his boyfriend did not relent. Sephiroth gently gnawed each of Cloud's toes in turn, then the heels of his feet for good measure. Cloud's stomach was aching by the time Sephiroth spread his legs and plopped between them, causing water to splash over the side of the tub.

Cloud was out of breath and grinning up at Sephiroth. "Why are you so mean to me?"

"Because I love every inch of you to death," Sephiroth murmured, kissing Cloud's water slick cheek. "Especially your monkey toes."

"I should get to bite you somewhere," Cloud countered, raising himself up in the water and bumping his chest against Sephiroth's. "You bite me all the time! It's my turn!"

"Forget about it, I don't like that biting shit," Sephiroth dismissed, moving kisses across Cloud's collarbone. "Not the other end of it, anyways. Biting you is fun because you squeak."

Cloud ignored that in favor of pressing forward, "Well I think you owe me one, anyways! Just one bite… maybe four seconds long."

"Fine," Sephiroth sighed, and tilted his head to display his neck.

"Not there," Cloud grinned. "Get up on your knees."

Sephiroth blinked and hesitated just a moment. But curiosity won out over better judgment, and he slowly moved up to his knees in the water. Was Cloud going to bite his balls or something?

"Turn around," Cloud requested.

Sephiroth slowly obeyed, keeping a keen eye over his shoulder on Cloud for any sudden moves. He trusted his lover but was still on edge with the notion of being bitten.

"Close your eyes," Cloud suggested, taking water in his hands to wipe the shampoo bubbles off of Sephiroth's round, muscular ass.

In a show of his casual aloofness, Sephiroth closed his eyes. But his fingers gripped the side of the bathtub, waiting for—

It was a good thing that the hotel was so small, remote and vacant, or it was likely that the local police would have been called right away from the sound of Sephiroth's guttural shriek of surprise.

Nobody but Cloud and a couple of tropical birds on their balcony were around to hear Sephiroth wail, "YOU BIT MY FUCKIN' ASS!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Before the first shrieking note could pierce the silence, Cloud's hand shot out and slapped the snooze button. Every morning before the alarm went off, the clock made a series of barely audible clicking noises. His brain had trained itself to shoot awake at the telltale sound—anything at all to stop the morning cluster fuck of radio noise from jarring him into a panic. He released an agonized groan against his pillow, hating school, hating mornings, hating Shin-Ra, hating everything!

How was he to be expected to return to school after he'd had such a lovely summer vacation? There was a deep tan settled on his skin, and his hair had been blasted bright blonde by the sunshine,. and The only parts of him that were still creamy white were places that the feeling of Sephiroth's touch still lingered.

But now? Now he was waking up chilly and alone on his springy, cheap dorm mattress. The odors of Cameron's dirty laundry and Psycho's butthole wafted across the room. Instead of kissing Sephiroth all day, he had to run until he spat blood, lift ridiculously heavy items until his muscles burned, and stuff more military knowledge into his brain.

Being a Cadet sucked!

He would have given anything for just one more day of vacation to wake up next to his beloved, and to taste those delicious, salty, heavy –tasting, first-thing-in-the-morning kisses. Cloud's shifted his hips shifted against his springy mattress, adding to his morning frustration. He realized these were his sexually desperate teenage years, but he was still a victim to his own body's demands.

He reached between himself and the bed, squeezing himself to ease the ache, and giving his cock a heavy tug in an attempt to mimic Sephiroth's touch.

"Kindly remove your filthy hands from me!" His penis cried in outrage.

Cloud released himself with a huff. His body had been spoiled by Sephiroth's attentions, and it never seemed to get enough. His long fingers, his wet tongue, his soft lips and big teeth... Cloud let out a huff of frustration.

It wasn't only the spectacular sex he craved. Over the course of their vacation together, the things Sephiroth would do and say, or perhaps even just a particularly devilish smile, would physically pain Cloud. Every day, often several times and day, Sephiroth's charm would steal Cloud's heart and render him speechless.

"I'm so in love with you," Cloud had told him the previous morning with a tremoring pant in his voice. As it would be the final day of vacation, they'd woken up to express themselves physically, and their legs were still tangled as they lay side by side.

"Awesome," Sephiroth had drawled with a relaxed grin without opening his eyes, a thin layer of dewy sweat highlighting his cheekbones and the subtle dimples in his cheeks. Cloud remembered staring for a long while, frozen in place by Sephiroth's beauty and his charmingly glib response.

Once he could move, Cloud clamored on top of his man and kissed him with an abandon that came off as comical, but reached out from a very real place inside. Sephiroth laughed into the kiss and returned it, taking two handfuls of Cloud's ass.

He had moaned against Sephiroth's mouth, "... Are you in the mood for me?... Inside you?..."

Sephiroth turned away from the kiss with an intimate chuckle. "Gimme a few minutes."

"Can't you recover like... midway? Like I could start fucking you now..." Cloud suggested, pressing his arousal against Sephiroth's stomach. "And you'll catch up, yeah?"

The persistence might have come off as demanding or even annoying, but Cloud's coaxing smile and the evidence of how his utterly insatiability he was were one of the things that Sephiroth loved about him. He liked that Cloud was addicted to his touch, and would have been a liar if he said that Cloud's devotion didn't make him a little bit smug. It was only a negative thing when it resulted in tears due to a separation.

Separation. Remembering that three month long heartache made Sephiroth want to give Cloud anything he wanted - more so than usual. He smiled and kissed Cloud's nose, "Let me eat somethin' real quick. A minute ago when I came, I don't even think anythin' came out but debris. You fuckin' used me up this past week."

Cloud laughed wildly, "Are you telling me I finally depleted all of your reserves?"

"You proud of yourself?"

"No, I'm devastated! We need to get some fluids in you, quick!" Cloud giggled, and quickly got off the bed.

"Okay. And for the record, I am in the mood for you... Inside me..." Sephiroth mimicked Cloud's shy delivery with a wide smile.

"Hurry up and recover, then..." Cloud grinned down at him with a bright flush lighting his cheeks. He jogged to the kitchen to retrieve a half full carton of orange juice and some store bought muffins. They had a little breakfast in bed, sharing the juice and munching in a companionable silence. Only when Cloud began to eat did he realize how hungry he was, and he polished off three of the muffins ravenously.

Once he'd had his fill, Sephiroth watched Cloud eat. He brushed a piece of hair away from Cloud's lips, and then became interested in the yellow mess. He twisted the longest strand and tickled it against Cloud's jaw, "...You ready to go back to real life tomorrow?"

"NO," Cloud said through his food. "I wish vacation would last forever."

"Who needs vacation? I love work. And I love you. I'm happy all the time," Sephiroth's fingers meandered through Cloud's mussed hair, lazily arranging the chaotic vertical spikes into neater rows. "Besides, it's never really gonna change. We'll never be the nine-to-five, see-ya-at-dinner kind of people."

"I know I keep saying it..." Cloud gently argued, wiping his mouth with a tissue before balling it up and stuffing it into the now empty juice carton. "I just wanna be with you all the time. I know it's stupid."

"Then stop sayin' it already."

"Hey, we don't have such a bad relationship if my only complaint is that I never get enough of you. Right?"

"Your only complaint?" Sephiroth huffed doubtfully.

"Well, my main complaint," Cloud gave him a cheeky grin and swung a leg over Sephiroth's hips. From his vantage point he admired the sight of his lover trapped under him. "I guess I won't be satisfied unless I become a full blown stalker."

"Stalk me all you want," Sephiroth encouraged, running his fingers over Cloud's thighs. "But even when we're livin' together it's not like I'm gonna be home every mornin' or night. You won't be either, you'll be doin' your own thing. It's just how it is in Shin-Ra–What?"

Sephiroth trailed off when Cloud took his hands and squeezed, drawing his green eyes away from his body and to his face. "... Do you really want to live together when I'm out of school?"

With his entire field of vision stolen by a nude, heaven- sent blonde angel with the most gorgeous blue eyes he'd ever seen, Sephiroth's decision was instantaneous, "Why wait 'til then? Junior SOLDIERs can live off campus. That's a twenty minute commute every mornin' to school, though. That'll be a pain in the ass."

Cloud's eyes widened, "So next year if I'm a Junior SOLDIER... You would let me move in here with you? Really?"

"My home is your home. You know that."

Cloud held Sephiroth's hands tightly, "... Do you actually think it could work out?"

"Why not?"

"It's so serious!" Cloud cried, his face turning cherry red. "Moving in together? Do you realize this is like you... asking me to marry you?"

Sephiroth's nose wrinkled slightly and he pulled his hands back, "Jesus, Cloud. Why do you always bring that marriage shit up?"

"Because it's true!"

"No it isn't. That's the kind of overblown, romanticized crap that breaks people apart in the end. This is reality, and it's about me likin' you and you likin' me and us bein' roommates who like to fuck. That's what's real. There's no such thing as marriage or the word '"love'," that's all imaginary bullshit."

Cloud shrank back a little, and twisted his lips to the side.

"... But you know I do love you, right?" Sephiroth reminded him, backtracking like crazy. He realized his words might have come out harshly, which couldn't have been farther from the intent. "I love you so hard it just... Makes me sick that I have to use a word like 'love' to describe it to you. Do you understand?"

Cloud shrugged a shoulder.

Sephiroth frowned. "Did I suck all the life out of you?"

Cloud nodded.

"I'll put it back," Sephiroth declared and sat up suddenly. He wrapped both arms around Cloud and kissed his mouth until the tiny pout disappeared and was replaced with a smile. "It'll be great, livin' together. When I graduated and left the med labs, I wanted to be by all by myself. Live alone and make my own place, ya know? So I got this big ass loft and I still don't even know what to do with it. There are unfinished rooms you've never even been in, and they can be all yours. You can have your own bathroom. You can have two if you want. You can have your own fuckin' record playin' lounge if you want. I mean... If you want space, I got space. So come and take up some of this space, okay?"

Cloud knew Sephiroth was rambling to squash any potential bad feelings, but still wanted to milk the situation a little. "It's not like it has to be set in stone right now... I mean at least think about it... Your feelings might change in a year, right? If there's no such thing as love... You might find someone else."

"You're a shithead," Sephiroth informed him. Then after a brief moment of contemplation and a small smile at whatever he saw behind his eyes, he continued, "... Besides, I already have thought a lot about it, and I want you here. It'll be fun comin' home and findin' you around the place."

"You sure are sweet when you think I'm mad..." Cloud grinned.

"Whatever shuts you up the quickest," Sephiroth chuckled with a kiss to each of Cloud's cheek, and then his lips. "But really. I'm not askin' you to live with me because it's what I think you want. It's what I want."

"I know," Cloud told him, stretching his arms up above his head with a deep yawn. Unwittingly, he was putting everything he had on blatant display. "... So what do you wanna do today?"

Sephiroth's eyes lidded slightly. "... I thought you were all gung- ho to fuck me."

"I thought you were old, and needed time to recover!" Cloud cried, squealing as he was flipped onto his back.

"Nah," Was all he said before he began to kiss his way down Cloud's torso.

One more year and I'll be living with him... Cloud thought, and made two fists in his sheets, so in love he felt like he'd explode. Jesus God almighty savior! Cloud desperately wanted Sephiroth right then, and prayed hard against his pillow for the ability to time travel back to that moment with Sephiroth's mouth sliding over his thighs...

Cloud then opened his eyes, staring at Cam as he made use of the snooze time. This romantic longing could hinder his progress if he didn't shake it off quickly. SOLDIER wasn't about domestication, and the privilege of living with Sephiroth during his final year of school wasn't enough of a goal to propel Cloud towards success.

He could drop out of school, turn his back on the army and move in with Sephiroth that very night. Done and done. But Cloud knew he'd never be happy like that,; shacking up at his successful boyfriend's place while working some pointless job to pass the time. Sephiroth wouldn't be proud of him, and neither would his mother, or his friends.

And every day at school, —whether he was knocking a bigger boy onto his ass, or experiencing the thrill of getting to hold or fire an actual weapon, or seeing evidence of himself his mind and body changing in mind and body due to the army's influence... —Cloud knew this was where he was meant to be.

Hopeless romantics and sex addicts made legendary warriors, after all. There was the entire Trojan War fought for the love of Helen, there was the studly Marc Anthony and foxy Cleopatra, there was Sir Lancelot and Lady Guinevere's illicit affair, and more recently and less fictionally, Sephiroth himself. The man was certainly going down in history as a war machine, but he could also be the most gentle, nourishing person that ever existed.

The alarm suddenly blasted to life, and personalities from a local Midgarian morning show enthusiastically filled the silence. Even though he was already awake, the noise made him lurch. He turned it off just in time to hear Cameron lament, "Why tha fuck did we join dis army?"

Under most circumstances he would have laughed, but instead Cloud moaned against the pillow. "I dunno."

At least there was the second-year greeting was first thing that morning, which involved sitting instead of running. That thought was enough to rouse both of them from bed. Cam went about putting food in Psycho's bowl, while Cloud opened the window to let some late summer breeze into the small room, and the stench of dirty socks out. They were well accustomed to seeing each other in varying degrees of nudity and arousal by now, and felt no shame in shirking off their sleep pants and pulling on their uniforms in front of each other.

They both made their way into the bathroom to take turns brushing their teeth. While Cloud bent over the sink to brush, Cam frowned into the mirror. His father had forced him to cut his hair over his summer vacation, and while it was far from buzzed, it was too short for his liking. Cloud secretly thought that Cam's hair always seemed dirty when it was long and looked far better short, but kept this opinion to himself.

While trying to make sense of his new style, Cam spoke, "So let's go over da plan for dis year again."

"Extra weight training, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights," Cloud supplied after he spat out toothpaste residue.

"And sword practice Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights," Cam added.

Cloud nodded, "Study groups on Thursdays after sword practice, since tests are always on Fridays."

"And I wanna see you eatin' twenty-four fuckin' seven. If you're not sleepin' or talkin' you need to be eatin'. You's are still twenty pounds under the minimum weight. You outta be at least ten pounds over."

Cloud scowled as he rinsed his mouth. When it was clear he elbowed Cam, "And you need to work on your stamina. You're getting so fucking fat you can't move for too long without getting winded."

"Your mom knows all about my stamina, bitch," Cam defended, still playing with his new haircut in the mirror. He turned away and flexed obscenely. "And this isn't fat. Feel!"

"I know you have a crush on me, but I'm not squeezing any part of you," Cloud pivoted himself away to make room for Cam to get to the sink.

"Feel my guns!" Cam cried.

"I don't want to!"

Cam manhandled Cloud and put one of his slim hands on his bicep. "Feel dat shit? It's like I'm a fuckin' robot from da future!"

"It's just fat. Seph's are harder," Cloud thrust his nose into the air and left the bathroom.

Cam's laughter followed him out. Cloud grinned, unable to stay miffed at his roommate for long. "Alright so you'll work on endurance, and I'll eat the cafeteria out of house and home. And maybe we'll stand a chance at being accepted into the SOLDIER exams."

"Oh, we'll get in," Cam declared confidently before beginning to brush his teeth. Then through toothpaste he called, "If not, you'll blow your boyfriend an' get us in."

"If only it was that easy," Cloud sighed.

"You tellin' me you's aren't countin' on a little help from him?"

Cloud shook his head. "If anything, he'll make it harder. Some nonsense about ethics and integrity. The nerve!"

"Well shit," Cam plopped down on his mattress to lace his boots. Psycho was still snoozing on the bed and moaned in aggravation, and was still snoozing on the bed. The once tiny kitten was now the size of an average dog. Cam rustled his fur., "Enjoy sleepin' in while ya can, asshole. You's are gonna start fire trainin' soon enough."

"Fuck off," Psycho grumbled and flopped onto his other side.

Cloud reached over and scratched the cat's ears, and there was a barely audible purr. "You wanna go for a walk before we leave?"

Instead of responding in his usual excitement at the suggestion of a walk, Psycho shook his head. "Too sleepy..."

The cat was quickly becoming a grumpier teenager than both Cam and Cloud combined. He felt both proud and slightly rejected by Psycho's new indignation, but Cloud supposed it was how all parents felt when their children were coming of age.

Cam seemed oblivious to the attitude change, and grinned as he gave the cat a squeeze. "My widdle baby is gettin' so fuckin' big! He must be gettin' frustrated too, check out his balls! They're gettin' huge!"

Cam then attempted to manhandle Psychopath so that he could proudly display the cat's developing genitalia. With a howl of humiliation, Psycho puffed a tiny fireball in Cam' face, who then dropped him with a yelp.

"Don't talk about my balls! Fuckin' pervert!" Psycho shouted before he slithered under Cam's mattress. Although he was bigger, he still had the feline ability to wiggle himself into improbably small spaces.

Cam gave a bug eyed shrug after the cat disappeared. "Maybe I shoulda got his furry ass fixed?"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

To Cloud's bemusement, the Shin-Ra Military Academy campus was crawling with fresh meat. The new Cadets were wandering around looking small and insecure, often in tight groups led by SOLDIERs that had once again been roped into Big Brother duty. Even though some were bigger than him, Cloud couldn't help but walk a little taller. It felt good to finally be on the inside looking out, for once.

Skylar was quick to spot Cloud and Cameron, and exchanged happy and quick greetings with them. Johnny the stoner boy then caught up with them, who was followed by Cory. Skylar's tolerably gay buddy Mike then found them, and they formed a happy little group forged by alcoholism.

The new second year class herded into the auditorium and took their seats. Cloud scanned the stage and saw a few of the more prominent drill instructors seated there, as well as a few SOLDIERs,. There was also the Headmaster, the Superintendent, and what looked like a medical professional from the labs.

Once everyone was seated and relatively quiet, a young man opened the orientation. Cloud eyed him with curiosity, and was sure he'd seen him floating around HQ, and he might have even been at Rhonda's baby party. The man had dirty blonde hair and luminous gray eyes, and looked like a typical shy nerd that had blossomed into a mildly attractive adult -— with a little help from mako. He seemed a little awkward speaking into a microphone, and fumbled around nervously before clearing his throat.

"Good morning Cadets! My name is Kunsel Stormgaard. I'm a SOLDIER Second Class. I'm your new Second Year Coordinator, and I'm here to help you prepare for the SOLDIER exams. We'll be seeing a lot of each other this year, especially with this small class size. Hopefully I'll get some one on one time with each of you..." He seemed to paused, and seemed to be waiting for some sort of applause or reaction from the group. After an awkward beat of silence, Kunsel gave a weak laugh and continued.

"Well I... uh, I won't keep you long from your studies, but I am going to take the time to ensure that this class is on the same page as far as expectations from the SOLDIER program. As you all know, the first week in August is the SOLDIER exam for second year students. I can assure you that this small class size will not increase anyone's chances of being accepted."

The exams were no joke –— guys sometimes died by the middle of the year. They dropped dead from exhaustion, poisoned from mako poisoning, steroid overdoses, or overexposure., Some committed suicide from the stress, or and others were even victims of murdered from other jealousy other candidates who snapped under the pressure and jealousy.… Cloud's hands shook and twisted nervously on his lap as Kunsel spoke of what they had to be accomplished this year to even be accepted as an exam hopeful.

"There are certain physical requirements that you're already aware of. The most basic being height and weight," Kunsel told them. The boys had to be at least 5'5" and weigh 150 pounds, and a few eyes actually flicked to in Cloud's direction, who was by far the smallest in the class. "There are several Cadets who are still gaining the necessary weight, but the entire group has cleared minimum height."

"Yeah right," Some unknown and rather paltry looking redhead said from across the aisle. "I'm sure General Sephiroth has something to do with that."

"I'm 5'5 and a half," Cloud whispered at him. "It's not like Sephiroth could make me grow taller, dumbass."

"Your stupid hair doesn't count toward your height," The redhead shot back.

Cloud was taken aback by the rudeness, and then became heated, "I'm 5'"5'" and a half. You wanna measure me yourself?"

The redheaded boy nudged his companion who was also glaring at Cloud. "I wouldn't wanna mess up your cute hairdo."

Cloud felt a surge of rage and leaned halfway across the aisle, "You're right, my hair is totally cute. But I'd be perfectly willing to mess it up if you wanna fucking test me."

By this time the redhead and several of his friends were whispering back heated threats.

"Better shut your mouth, Bone City faggot, before I beat you into the ground," One of the redhead's friends muttered darkly.

Cam leaned over Cloud to interject, leaning on him heavily. His naturally loud voice easily overlapping the others', "You's guys got me all confused an' flustered. Who ya talkin' to? You's couldn't be disrespectin' my Nordic bitch, I musta heard ya wrong."

"We don't need you faggots spreading AIDS in our army," Another boy from across the aisle announced, and those words ignited Cloud's friends. And by this time even more boys were feeding off the aggression and adding their own fuel to the fire. Even Johnny, who was normally so illegally medicated and relaxed, seemed to get into it.

Cloud wasn't listening to anyone else, he was too busy focusing on the redhead who dared cause trouble on this momentous day, "I'm gonna destroy you! I'm gonna rip your hair out! Your dumbass looking boyfriend over there won't wanna sit on your ugly fucking face after I fucking bust it open— - "

"You probably just wanna touch me!" The redhead chuckled.

"Meet us outside!" Cam was hissing shrilly at them. "Fuckin' meet us outside! We're gonna fuckin bury your asses outside! This is MY bitch! You don't disrespect MY bitch -—"

"Excuse me gentlemen.." To everyone's horror, their mini altercation was now the center of attention. Kunsel, the faculty, and everyone else in the auditorium was looking directly at them. "... Am I interrupting something important back there?"

Cloud, Cameron, and the other boys shrunk in on themselves and shook their heads. Cloud was disheartened because he knew his hair and face were unforgettable, and this was a bad impression to give Kunsel, someone who might have a hand in his very fate as a SOLDIER.

Kunsel only seemed mildly bemused by the interruption, "If you want to fight, do it on class time. Stupid to get written up for something you could just get a good grade for. Right?"

They all nodded.

"As I was saying, the minimum requirements for SOLDIER consideration are not to be seen as a goal. Your goal should be perfection, and the minimum requirement should be far beneath your actual achievements by the end of this year."

They had to maintain a 'B' average in academics, and be involved in at least one extracurricular activity. They had to have 300 logged hours of hands-on training in one specialized weapon area, be it blade, bow, or automatic. They had to locate and level up no less than three pieces of materia, one of which must be summonable, and exhibit exceptional skill in using them during real time battle.

And all of this was just to be able to take the exam. There was still the exam itself...

Cloud chewed on his thumb nail nervously. His grades were good, and he'd work hard to keep it that way, and he was pretty sure drumming was extracurricular. 300 logged hours of weapon training over the course of a year was nothing -— he'd have that for sure, and he knew he wanted to carry a sword because it was the quickest and lightest. He didn't want to worry about the hassle of ammunition.

The materia part would be tricky. Magic was something some people just weren't good at. And Cloud knew it was too much to hope for a hidden talent, because he already had two : Banging drums and sucking cock. Magic was probably going to be the biggest challenge of the year.

Cloud began to panic. Even though he'd passed the first year with flying colors, it felt as though he'd skated through based on cute looks and a good attitude. Surely they were grading him on a curve based on his size… Surely he couldn't actually belong here… There was no way he could ever stand as a professional equal to Sephiroth. There was no way that he would ever be accepted by SOLDIER in less than twelve months...

No, they'd never let him take the exam.

His friends would proceed without him! He'd never get invited to all the exclusive Junior SOLDIER parties! Then he'd have to languish during his Third Year training as a regular army grunt, and then maybe try again the next summer. But that would permanently stunt his career without Junior SOLDIER experience; he'd be way behind his friends.

Sephiroth would suffer the professional and moral shame of dating an underachieving loser! That is, until he found a suitable replacement... Some funny, good- natured SOLDIER trendy enough not to care about the word "'love"' so much, and who would be able to give actual opinions on stupid horror movie special effects, someone financially secure and tall and handsome and brave. Someone who would be able to make love to Sephiroth like a man...

Oh, Cloud hated whoever was going to date Sephiroth next! He hated that he was going to eventually lose everything and everyone he loved! The goddamn Universe had set him up to fail! Life was so cruel!

"That's basically the gist of things," Kunsel smiled, obviously content in the enviable knowledge that he was a SOLDIER, supreme to every other creature on Earth.

"Next Monday we're all going to be taking a field trip to the HQ building for your first big-boy medical evaluations. There'll be paperwork passed out in your first academic class this morning detailing what to expect. So I'll see you guys then! And I want to encourage you all to really push yourselves out of whatever boxes you've put yourselves in last year. There are tons of activities, clubs, and sports here on campus and you've gotta try everything to find your forte. And next up speaking are three people who know a lot about the importance of the second year of Cadet training: - General Hewley, General Rhapsodos, and General Sephiroth."

Cloud shot straight up in his chair. Like an angel, Sephiroth glided onto the stage with that beautiful, graceful strut. He was overlapped by the other two, but who cared about them? Sephiroth stopped and to Cloud's surprise, gave Kunsel an intimate bro grab. It was highly unusual for Sephiroth, who usually tried to look so poised on stage. Both Genesis and Angeal also greeted Kunsel with respect and affection before gathering around the podium.

Cloud watched as Sephiroth scanned the room, allowing the brief murmur that had traveled across the room to die down. He wondered if Sephiroth was trying to spot him, and sat up in his seat even taller. From the corner of his eye he couldn't help but notice ugly glances from the pack of barkers across the aisle.

If he was going to lose Sephiroth to someone, they were going to be wonderful and capable, and not one of those jealous bitches.

Sephiroth spoke first, "The last time I addressed this group, I told you all that I had nothing at all to say until I could see what you are capable of," Sephiroth's eyes moved across the rows, looking at each of the boys in turn.

"Last year we had just under one hundred new Cadets, and now this group has been whittled down to eighty. You boys have been working, and I see a little bit of proof of that. You've earned the right be here as hopefuls to the SOLDIER program. A few of you might even be approached by the Turk recruiters throughout the year and decide to go in that direction. There's a lot of opportunity for all of you right now -—" Sephiroth's eyes finally reached Cloud, and lingered just a moment. "—and I want to see you making the best of it."

Genesis bumped his hip against Sephiroth's, neatly moving him away from the microphone. "So we're here to make an announcement. In light of some very recent media changes regarding the Academy and the SOLDIER program... General Sephiroth, General Hewley, and I will all be hosting weekend training seminars throughout the year.

"Due to the Northern Crater conflict last year, all of our seminars were taken over by highly qualified SOLDIERs, so you didn't have the opportunity to learn from us directly.

"This year will be much different! There will be several chances for you to spend the weekend with each General, and with this small class size, getting a spot shouldn't be a problem.

"Weekend seminars are seen as extracurricular, and looked upon very favorably upon by your exam graders. And when you attend a weekend seminar with a General... you're always given the following Monday off."

There was a brief outburst of joy from the Cadets.

Angeal didn't let it last long though., "Bear in mind that that Monday off will be completely necessary for recovery."

That effectively snuffed out the excitement in the room. Sephiroth almost smiled, "Now your Headmaster would like to say a few words to you."

With that, the three Generals took three empty seats that were hastily placed there by a stage hand. Angeal whispered something to Sephiroth, who crossed his arms and seemed to pass along the message to Genesis, who openly grinned at whatever was said.

The Headmaster began talking with his suffocating brand of haughty, condescending bravado, "Shin-Ra is the largest army in the history of formal battle. It is the largest army in the world because it attracts people with character. However, there are not many people with character in the world."

Cloud rolled his eyes. He hated listening to the Headmaster's speeches, the man was a second rate bullshitter. Cloud's fingertips itched for his phone, and he gave into temptation and dared to send a text to Sephiroth.

"That was pretty tricksy, u coming out of nowhere like that."

To Cloud's surprise, Sephiroth took his phone out while on the stage. He watched Sephiroth read the text, looking so official as he somberly tapped a reply with his thumbs. Nobody on the face of the Earth would have suspected it was Cloud Strife he was texting, and that this was the content of the message : This is bullshit Im not even sposed to b here ANGEAL WAS but got a sore throat n cant talk. Then Gen felt left out so he followed us here.

Cloud giggled, and texted back, Might be bullshit for u, but it made my day. Sexy man, ur a sight for sore eyes!

U just saw me yesterday, Sephiroth pointed out.

Too long ago! Ugh the headmaster is a terrible speaker. He takes all these awkward pauses.

I dont have a clue what hes talkin about. He was only sposed to be tellin u guys about the new winter dress code.

All stress forgotten, Cloud texted back feverishly, New winter dress code?

U get a scarf, no big whoop, Sephiroth replied.

It was a very big whoop! Cloud grinned, unable to wait to get his hands on a new piece of his uniform. Even though it was obviously the most fabulous cadet uniform ever, it got old wearing the same exact thing day in, day out. A new accessory was big news -— but a scarf? There were a dozen ways one could wear a scarf. And it would also be perfect to lasso Sephiroth with for kisses.

Maybe the Second Year wouldn't be so bad. It was the small things in life, after all.

Cloud texted back, So whats ur day gonna b like?

Again, General Sephiroth read his message with a solemn, serious face and gave a very official response : I have n office next door n the admin building. Want some easy extra credit? Itll only take a minute...

I would jump on u right now if I didn't have classes today, Cloud replied.

Ugh, I have a bizz trip to get briefed for anyways..… guess vacay's really over : (

Think u'll have the weekend clear? Cloud texted hopefully.

Sorry bb... promotion season is here. u know I'm gonna b gone a lot next month or two... Sephiroth actually looked in Cloud's direction then. He was expressionless, but the eye contact made Cloud's cheeks go warm.

He broke the eye contact only to quickly type, I know, its ok. I'll miss u! And I love u... : )

See u soon gorgeous. Keep it wet for me, Was was Sephiroth's reply, and then he tucked his phone back into his coat and straightened his back, all business.

With a snort, Cloud sent one more for him to read later : Yaknow, I still love u even tho ur too cool to text it back to me FUCKER! You better e-mail some pics of ur cock to make it up to me. Nice, stiff, LEAKY ones! And wear ur gloves w/out the knuckles.

He chuckled and slid his phone back into his pocket. He turned to glance at Cam, whose big brown eyes were glazing over. The Headmaster was still talking, and wasn't running out of steam anytime soon.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud didn't see Sephiroth again in person for six weeks. They texted almost daily, but spoke on the phone less frequently than they normally would during a separation. Sephiroth was swamped with the promotional season, and also with various PR due to his explosive interview with Rolling Stone. And frankly, Cloud was too distracted by his hectic schedule to really miss his beloved all that much. It was an odd feeling, and he wondered if he should be guilty.

His classes consisted of the ever present RUN first thing in the morning, and the even more ominous SURVIVE following that. Every morning the boys would be tested on some sort of hellish, simulated worst- case scenario. Cloud had been theoretically killed almost every morning since school began, but learned that man- eating sharks couldn't be put to sleep by rubbing their bellies. He was well beyond feeling embarrassed over his mistakes, and was able to laugh when the drill instructor took the blow-up shark raft from the pool and beat him with it.

Following a brief shower, Cloud dressed up for his four academic classes. They consisted of a frustrating brand of Calculus class in which they crunched actual numbers for the Shin-Ra space program;, the a painfully boring Military Management class in which they learned about the different directions their careers could go;, a college -level reading class;, and a somewhat entertaining class called Weapons Profiling class in which they learned how to take apart and use nearly any automatic weapon based on a few fundamental designs.

After that, Cloud dressed down again for three solid hours of SOLDIER Sword Preparation 1, followed by a friendly hour of Soccer -— the only thing he was actually any good at. Then he'd head back to the room to meet up with Cameron for whatever tortures they wanted to put themselves through that evening: - studying, gym time, or even more sword practice. Then it was another shower, perhaps a chat with Sephiroth and/or a quick wank, and then off to bed to do it all over again.

In the midst of all this, Cloud consumed food like a man on death row. He ate protein bars,; he ate bananas;, he ate bread;, he ate meat, cookies, vegetables, pasta, or whatever mysterious concoctions the cafeteria had mixed up that day. And while he ate everything in sight, he downed dietary shakes like they were water. With so much physical activity it was inevitable that he threw up almost daily, but he'd simply wipe his mouth and keep on eating. He never shat so much in his entire life, almost every night he was forced to give birth to a food baby.

He was somewhat relieved Sephiroth wasn't around. There was nothing sexy about food babies. But he had to gain the weight, and a little physical discomfort was worth it to him, and Sephiroth was entirely supportive.

"I feel so bloated," Cloud whined into the phone one evening. "You were skinny as a kid, weren't you? How'd you gain weight?"

"Bonbons."

"Candy?" Cloud asked doubtfully. "I don't wanna eat junk and get flabby. I'm trying build muscle, here."

"Who do ya think you're talkin' to?" Sephiroth asked, thoroughly reminding Cloud that he was one of the most chiseled, sexy, well- built men in the galaxy. "Eat a big handful of bonbons before you go to bed every night."

And so Cloud did, as sickening as it was. A week after he'd been taking Sephiroth's advice, he received an unexpected crate from Wutai. Sephiroth had sent him boxes upon boxes of bonbons in dozens of strange flavors that Cloud had never even heard of. It made his nightly bonbon tasting an adventure instead of a chore. Along with the candies, Sephiroth had also sent him a bottle of exotic Wutainese vitamins which he claimed would flush any junk that might clog his system from eating so much. Cloud couldn't even read the label, but trusted Sephiroth enough to take them.

Suddenly, painful food babies were no longer an issue and Cloud stopped feeling so bloated and sluggish. Sephiroth was a miracle worker! With his beloved's help and Cloud's other combined efforts, he'd managed to gain three pounds in seven weeks. It was good progress!

Sephiroth claimed that he'd never show Cloud any sort of special treatment, but that wasn't necessarily true. On the class trip to the medical labs for their first evaluations, Cloud had coincidentally been scheduled to have Rhonda conduct his physical. He was both grateful and petrified, as getting ass- naked was a requirement.

But he obeyed Rhonda's every command, and in return she kept it simple and professional. It was awfully weird having small lady fingers in his ass, but he supposed it was a blessing that they felt nothing like Sephiroth's fingers and couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything remotely sexual. His entire body emitted a wave of question marks that caused him to wiggle a little during the prostate exam, but thankfully he didn't get an erection or anything.

Along with a thorough physical, Cloud had his vaccinations updated. He also had his eyes, ears, teeth, blood, and urine tested.

"You are one healthy little mother fucker," Rhonda announced thoughtfully as she looked through a microscope at Cloud's saliva samples. "Perfect blood, perfect system. You don't even have any cavities. You're an excellent biological candidate for SOLDIER."

Cloud gasped, "Really! So what does that mean exactly?"

"You passed the first round."

"What's the next round?"

"Mako tolerance, but that'll come in the spring."

Cloud leaned forward with intrigue, "I learned in Mako Science that some people can't handle it."

"Some get sick. And other people handle it a little too well. It can be highly addictive. If you turn into a complete psycho after your first exposure, you aren't going to be a good SOLDIER. They get quite a bit, and often."

Cloud was dazzled, "Do people really freak out? Like Charlie Sheen caliber freak out?"

Rhonda snorted, "Not often, but it happens. And when it happens, it's bad."

"Please just give me some mako right now! I wanna see if I can take it!" Cloud begged. "I can't live in suspense!"

"No," Rhonda pointed her pen at him seriously. "Not a drop until spring. You aren't even at the right weight, yet."

"Just a little bit! I mean a little can't hurt! Just sprinkle some on me!" Cloud clasped his hands and shook them, giving her the sweetest, most doe- eyed expression he could muster. "You gotta have some mako lying around in here somewhere..."

"Mako is toxic without the proper pre-dosage procedures," Rhonda told him, unaffected by his manufactured cuteness.

"I like toxins!"

"Put your clothes back on."

Sephiroth's Rolling Stone release in late September was a momentous occasion. Even though he'd read the magazine cover to cover already, Cloud couldn't resist purchasing one off the stands, only because Sephiroth looked so fucking sexy. He also bought issues to complete the set with Genesis's and Angeal's covers. Angeal was posing waist deep in mud, was filthy and shirtless and hairy and chiseled and huge and... oh dear. Cloud knew there would come a day when he called upon Angeal for spank bank purposes, and that day would be an awkward one. He supposed on that dark day, he'd have to start hanging out at biker bars looking for bears or something.

Genesis wasn't about to be outdone by either Sephiroth or Angeal. He was practically naked and showering himself with bottled water. It would have been pornographic if he didn't have some fake prosthetic wound slashed across his chest. But due to the frankness of the gore juxtaposed with the provocative look on Genesis' face, his cover almost outsold Sephiroth's. None of the Generals's posters could be kept in stock in any store.

For some strictly heterosexual reason, Cameron began to idolize Genesis. He even fought to purchase one of the redhead's notorious posters, and one afternoon it was dueling Sephiroth's poster for wall space.

"You know he's a huge faggot don't you?" Cloud asked, taken aback by Genesis' image hanging over Cameron's bed.

"You're a huge faggot too, an' I like you's just fine," Cameron shot back. "Besides, Genesis is a fuckin' hero. And he likes Jane Austin, too. And he's got tha balls to be himself in da eye of tha public, unlike tha fuckin' ice queen you're datin'."

Cloud bellowed, "You were speechless when he walked in here! Don't even act like you don't worship Sephiroth when he's standing in front of you!"

Cameron shrugged that off, "Naw, Genesis is the best one."

"So you'd fuck Genesis over Sephiroth?" Cloud asked in complete horror.

"I wouldn't fuck either of 'em, because I respect 'em too much. And I wouldn't let 'em fuck me, because that's never fuckin' happenin'. I'd just get on my knees an' close my eyes an' think happy thoughts while they beat off. With Sephiroth... Eh, I'd let him gimme a slop shot on tha mouth. Like when he tells me he's gonna come I wouldn't turn away, but I wouldn't open up my mouth or anythin'. I'd be fuckin' cringin' the entire time. But with Genesis?... Man. I'd at least try an' swallow a little of it, just kinda put in some effort."

Cloud was giggling wildly, "What about Angeal?"

Cam shrugged. "No offense to him, he's prolly tha smartest outta all three but he looks like he'd do some weird fuckin' shit in bed... I'd prolly just talk dirty to him on a phone maybe, or like through a closed fuckin' door, but not physically be in the room when he nuts -— "

Their door was then abruptly yanked shut before a neighboring cadet shouted through it, "Would you freaking mind closing your door while you have disgusting conversations?"

They were both quiet for a moment before Cloud blinked, "... What was disgusting about it?"

To Cloud's surprise, his mention in the article was tastefully done, and didn't use his first name. It only referred to him as Cadet Strife, not that his last name wasn't any more out of place than his first name, but at least they tried. There was also a very small picture of the two of them standing near each other at the Northern Crater Debriefing Gala, and but it was only in the magazine because Rufus, Genesis, and Angeal were also in the picture. Of all the people photographed, only Rufus looked perfectly camera ready and seemed to be posing with a martini glass, leading everyone involved to believe he'd had a hand of choosing what photos Rolling Stone used.

Cloud hadn't received any sort of recognition in class, and only some mild teasing at school. Everyone already knew about their relationship anyways, and the ones who weren't convinced by the rumors weren't exactly blown away by the truth. Everyone was too focused on their own lives to really care all that much.

Except for those unfortunate souls who had no lives: the jealous little redhead and his group of wanna-be bully friends. The redhead's name was Bryce, and he and his crew always seemed to be lurking and never really doing much. They had nothing on Billy and his crew of jerks in Nibelheim, who had coined many colorful phrases concerned concerning Cloud and what he wanted to do to their cocks.

A cock, maybe. Their cocks? Vomit.

But aside from a few lingering glares, Bryce hadn't interacted with Cloud much at all. Then again, Cloud was almost never alone. On the one fateful day he did stay at Soccer class late and went into the locker room after hours, there they were. Cloud entered the room with a roll of his eyes, knowing he probably wasn't going to leave without getting a black one.

"Fraternizing with superiors isn't going to get you very far, Strife," Bryce sneered as Cloud passed by, waving a copy of Rolling Stone in his direction.

"Yeah, he probably just does whatever General Sephiroth wants like a little bitch," One of his lanky buddies laughed.

Cloud gave that a moment of consideration, and then nodded. "Basically."

Bryce took a moment to come back from the shock of that response, and snorted incredulously. "So you're completely shameless about fucking our honorable command for your own benefit?"

Cloud wondered if amazing sex, a soul deep connection, and incredible warmth was a personal benefit, and decided it probably was. "Pretty fucking shameless."

"You are filth. You don't belong here. I hope the mako kills you, you scrawny slut!" Bryce seethed.

Now that was an insult with some merit. Cloud narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. "There's something I've been wanting to say to you since we met..."

He wasn't sure if it was due to the stress, or the testosterone- laden environment of the Shin-Ra Military Academy, but Cloud lost his mind. A switch inside himself flipped on, and he found himself in the midst of a fistfight.

He probably should have thought it out better considering the fact that he was outmatched, but the others stayed back while the two rolled around on the tiled floor, all fists and elbows. Cloud tasted blood, but he saw it on Bryce's face too. He ached from the blows, but knew that the redheaded cunt felt the same way. With a grin, he seized an opportunity to bury his fingers in Bryce's short red hair and yanked with every intent to scalp him.

But then he cried out when he felt a knee connect with his groin. It was immobilizing, but Cloud tried to fight through it. He was unsuccessful.

Bryce got in two more solid hits before the fight was broken up. Cloud was enraged that it ended on such a note, with the impression that he'd lost. What the hell was up with redheads anyways? He couldn't seem to talk to one without wanting to kill them.

The two were written up, and lectured heavily on out of class fighting. Since it was Cloud's first write up, he was let off with a heavy warning. They were forced to shake hands, and then sent to the school nurse's office to get bandaged up. The nurse took a quick peek at Cloud's groin, where there was some heavy bruising developing on his lower stomach and left thigh.

She hissed when she saw the injury, "That really must hurt."

Cloud nodded, staring at the ceiling to avoid the fact that he was flashing his junk at a strange woman. "Yes ma'am."

"I'm not supposed to do this for boys who roughhouse..." was all she said before she administered a very quick Cure. "Just make sure you limp out of here, or else I'll get in trouble."

Cloud put on an Academy Award winning performance as he dragged himself back to his dorm. There, Cameron, Skylar, Johnny, Cory, and Mike declared war on Bryce and anyone he called a friend. As Johnny put it in his marijuana-fuming way, "We can't like... have some other dude kicking our dude in the crotch and stuff. Cloud's really cool. Bryce isn't cool. Bryce rhymes with 'nice'.' Except that he's not. That makes him a fucking liar."

With so much distraction, Cloud woke up one day to realize that it was already mid-October.

In just two short weeks, there was an extremely important event:... Halloween. And he and Sephiroth's one year anniversary.

An entire year... Cloud came to the realization while falling asleep one night, and shot awake from the shock of it all. He quietly got out of his squeaky bed, picked up his cell phone and crept into one of the dark, vacant study rooms. He announced his presence on a hoarse whisper to ensure there were no boys beating off or hooking up in the darkness. When he confirmed that he was probably alone, he closed the door, and sat with his back against it, and dialed Sephiroth.

To his surprise, Sephiroth picked up almost immediately. "Good morning baby."

"Good morning. What time is it there?"

"Almost seven. Just took a shower, now I'm makin' some breakfast."

"What are you wearing?"

"Just some briefs... and this hotel robe thing they gave me. It probably looks pretty stupid."

"Is it fluffy?" Cloud giggled.

"Yeah, kind of. So why are you up so early? And why on Earth are you callin' me?" Sephiroth asked, taking a bite of what sounded like cereal.

"Do you know what today is?" Cloud asked with brows raised in mock sophistication.

"Um," Sephiroth made a thoughtful noise as he took another bite. "Hmm... It's October 17th."

"So you're aware that we have less than two weeks until... Halloween?" Cloud prodded.

"Yeah. So?" He inquired casually.

"'So'? Are you kidding me?" Cloud boomed in disappointment before cupping a hand over his mouth and hoping nobody heard it. "You know damn well it's gonna be our one year anniversary!"

"Nuh uh. Not until the first of November, accordin' to you. Per Cloud, we were not official until the followin' day."

Cloud laughed, "You're full of shit, we agreed the day was gonna be set on Halloween."

"Okay, so I win an argument for once!" Sephiroth gloated. "So listen. Halloween falls on a Thursday this year."

"I know..."

"You're goin' to school," Sephiroth said sternly, and before Cloud could protest he clarified, "But come stay with me that night. And cut classes on Friday."

Cloud melted against the door, sliding down until he hit the floor. "Mmmn... That sounds wonderful."

"So you have three options... First one : We can do the classy, dressin' up, wine you and dine you kinda anniversary. Which I am perfectly happy to do -— "

"It's not often that we're classy," Cloud thought aloud.

"Second option : You shut the fuck up and let me surprise you with somethin' completely weird. Seriously. You'll never fuckin' guess what my brain came up with for you."

"...I'm a little frightened of that one."

"Third option : We celebrate the holiday, dress up and go to the annual Halloween get together. We can prolly just do some romantic shit the next day."

Cloud smiled. "How about... We go to the Halloween party. You fuck me like an animal all night. Then the next day... we do that completely random thing you thought of."

"It's a plan," Sephiroth declared, and made a noise as close to a giggle as his low vocal register would allow. "I already organized shit so I'll be back the day before Halloween, so it's on. Get a costume an' stuff in the meantime."

"What will you dress up as?"

"I'll just borrow some random uniform from HQ. I always do."

"No! That's no fun... let me pick out your costume!" Cloud squealed. "That way we can match! It can be a surprise!"

Sephiroth was prepared to argue, but realized that this was one of those topics that he had no chance of winning. So instead of wasting his energy, he accepted his fate without putting up a fight, "... That'll work. You know my sizes, right?"

"What do you think they translate to in women's?" Cloud asked innocently. "I'll probably have to custom order your stiletto heels, though. You have huge feet."

Sephiroth said nothing, but the sound of his chewing slowed down, and then eventually stopped.

Cloud sighed. "Fine, no drag. Your costume will be nice and butch, I promise."

"Appreciated," Sephiroth said before taking another bite.

Cloud sighed in contentment. He listened to his lover eat for a few moments before sighing again. "Seph... I really do miss you."

"I miss you too."

Cloud sighed a third time. "I... feel kind of guilty, though."

"Why?"

"You know that I miss you. But... on some days I forget to think about it... about how much I miss you. I wake up and look at your poster every single day, and I look at it again before I go to bed at night. Sometimes not having you hurts so much I wanna scream, but most of the time... it doesn't hurt. Looking at your poster just makes me feel..."

The pause drifted on until Sephiroth finally prompted, "Makes you feel what?"

"Just... happy I guess. It doesn't make me feel like murdering someone and skipping town to find you. It just makes me happy that you're alive and well and somewhere working hard, and busy being my hero and my general... and the best boyfriend in the world."

Sephiroth was immobilized by the sweetness of that statement. He tucked the warm, gooey feeling safely away and then straightened his back to inquire dryly. "And why does this make you feel guilty?"

"When you were at the Crater, I was a wreck for three months. It's been over half that amount of time since I've seen you but... I just feel happy."

"So you're not suicidal over me bein' away... and you're happy that we're gonna see each other real soon? That's the situation?" Sephiroth clarified.

Cloud thought about it, and then nodded. "Yeah."

"Welcome to the realm of normal human emotions," Sephiroth announced in a nasally captain's voice. "Please enjoy your stay on this side of insanity."

"You asshole. What do you even know about being 'normal' anyway?"

He joked, but inside Sephiroth's heart felt like a never ending display of fireworks were bursting inside of it. He was so relieved, and so elated that Cloud's separation anxiety was lessening. It was a tiny glimpse into the collected, witty kind of man Cloud was becoming, and it made Sephiroth that much more determined to hold on to this relationship with everything he had.

Again, Sephiroth tucked this feeling inside himself and snorted loudly, "You're the fuckin' asshole. You're prolly cryin' every night, 'Boo hoo, Sephiroth is so awesome, I wish Sephiroth were here!'"

"I don't miss you one bit!" Cloud declared. "I am extremely important in life. I have many friends, and I have many things to do at all times. I'm also getting extremely tall and buff, and soon every boy on this campus will want me to pee on them. I'll live like a sultan without you cramping my style."

"I love you, Cloud," Sephiroth told him gently. "I love you like crazy."

After letting out a gust of air, Cloud whispered, "... I love you too, Sephiroth."

"Go back to sleep. When you wake up, feel happy, and bust your ass in school. Okay?"

"Yes, sir..." Cloud grinned, biting his lip. "And I'll see you on Halloween."

"Yes you will. That's a promise."

"By the way... I did keep it wet for you."

"Huh?" Sephiroth asked, innocent and confused.

Cloud breathed into Sephiroth's ear before speaking slowly and deeply, "... I kept it wet for you. Before you left you asked me to keep it wet for you, and I did. I kept my hot little asshole wet... Isn't that what you wanted, Seph? It's wet and tight and ready for you to stuff your big f-fat c-cock ins-si-side. I'll text you later!"

Cloud hung up abruptly and bit down on his cell phone, unable to hold in a shrill squeal of humiliation. He was grateful he'd been able to hold it in long enough to get most of his words out. It probably wasn't very sexy, but he hoped perhaps Sephiroth had gotten a good, crass laugh out of his silly boyfriend's lame attempt at dirty talk.

On the contrary. Sephiroth was left standing in his hotel kitchen with his mouth hanging open, and with a very sudden tent in his fluffy hotel robe.

And the First Year Cadet who been keeping silent in the study room breathed a sigh of relief when Cloud finally left.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Chapter Image - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/art/BA - Chapter - 25 - Bathtub - 204230020

A/N

1 - I guess some people thought that this story was over or something. You'll know it's over because this will be the last sentence : "AND THE WORLD EXPLODED, THE END." Hahah how mad would you be if that's how this whole thing ended? SPOILER ALERT hahaha. Seriously though.

2 - I know it takes a long time for me to update stuff, but it's hard out there for a pimp. You can't TOUCH this, though.

3 - Also, I'm working on a gift for the reviewers. Not that I need your reviews to power my robots anymore - they run on human blood, now. But because I know it takes a lot of energy to muster up a tangible opinion on something. So it's not a vain attempt at getting you to review, basically just a thank you if you ever have, or if you ever even just thought about it but felt too stupid and inarticulate to actually say anything. I feel that way all the time. Next chapter I'll have that something for you, just to thank you. SPOILER : It's just shitty art. But it's my shitty art from OUR shitty story, so it's made with love.

4 - I say OUR story because, well, this story is personal to a lot of people. A lot of people have told me that this has helped them muster courage to be more of themselves, or to go after a love interest, or even to tell their parents that they're gay. So I say it's OUR story. And in OUR story, if we want massive amounts of buttsex and a plot full of holes... by God. Who's to tell us that that's wrong?

5 - Next update coming swiftly, I promise.


	26. Can't Sing, Can't Dance

The nice thing about Promotion Season was that Sephiroth's days were predictable; provided there were no annoying creature sightings to deal with, of course. But usually there was, since local authorities loved to manufacture some sort of mishap for the chance to fight alongside a Shin-Ra General. Sephiroth would always get his picture in some small town paper hailing him and whatever Sheriff stood beside him as heroes.

This pageantry somewhat cheapened the word. Sephiroth wondered if he'd ever done anything truly heroic since he was eighteen years old, just a sergeant trying to do the best he could... because he was constantly terrified of failing and being sent back to the lab. The word 'hero' wasn't even in his mind, then. 'Freedom' was the only thing he was concerned with.

Maybe those were the good old days. But for being good old days, they sure did suck ass.

These days were much nicer. Sephiroth toured the bases, staying as long as it took to speak to every man who wanted to speak with him. He usually got up around the sinfully late hour of seven, made himself breakfast, and enjoyed whatever features were offered in his current abode on whatever base. If there was an ironing board, by God he would iron something. If there was a cheap little hair dryer attached to the wall, he'd forgo his Chi utilitarian dryer and use it. If there was a bidet, then he'd squat over it. Free shampoos were pointless for his hair, but he would dab them on his pubes just to show gratitude and consume them.

Then it was strutting around the military bases like he owned them, buddying around with the other SOLDIERs, and playing mediator to problems great and small. The whole affair was much better this year than last, considering that this year he wasn't knocking on death's door due to the horrible overdose of vitamin A. By all laws of nature, he should have been dead many, many times over.

A lot of the army and SOLDIERs used this opportunity to have a General not only decide their rank and promotional status, but also to get advice on everything from hair care to relationships to training. Sephiroth felt like Dear Abby. It was nice to be needed, and gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that he was a leader approachable enough to ask for personal advice, but also respectable enough that the men would take it.

Sephiroth almost wished this was what being General was all about- just listening to bullshit all day and doling out random pieces of wisdom. With a camera crew, it'd make excellent daytime TV.

But then there was an army to train... strategies to build... projects to be overseen... meetings and events that simply required his ominous presence. That was the meat and potatoes of being a General, not deciding which Lieutenant should get the dog in the event of an unfortunate break up.

And there was only so much charm in being away from home. Before long, Sephiroth found himself bored and daydreaming during the endless parade of questions and listless in the evenings. He was pining for his own bed, pining for Midgar's deep fried cuisine, and especially pining for kisses from Cloud.

Sephiroth felt at ease with this separation from his little blonde toy. There was no threat of war or danger - no more so than usual, anyways. And there was a defined return date, which made all the difference. Sephiroth even popped into Midgar from time to time to gather materials or to attend important functions. It was a tease that was borderline torture to know he was only a few minutes from Cloud's soft kisses and tight embrace, but it was still nice to know the other was nearby and safe.

But knowing Cloud was safe didn't take away from his longing to touch him. Sephiroth was twenty-three, and there was one primal urge that constantly plagued his thoughts: his desire to hose people down with semen.

"This is sort of romantic," Genesis blurted one evening while they sat at the Junon base as they ate their base canteen dinner together and watched the sun set over the ocean. At twenty-six, the redhead was much in the same hormonal boat. "I'm getting horny."

"Me too," Sephiroth agreed, not taking his eyes off the colorful natural spectacle of the sky.

Genesis was silent, mostly in shock that Sephiroth even responded. Carefully, he continued. "... Oh?"

Feeling candid, Sephiroth answered easily. "I was talkin' to Cloud earlier. I like the way he laughs."

"I could never seriously date someone with a thick accent," Genesis declared. "Doesn't it get on your nerves?"

"No way. It's such a turn on."

"Do you get horny a lot? Do you two have a lot of sex?" Genesis pressed on, chewing his food eagerly. "All that mako didn't shrink your shaft, did it? I've heard it does that to some guys."

Sephiroth frowned a little at that. "Fuck no. You've seen it."

"I've never seen it up! Just flimsy," Genesis lamented. "Do you have a big, hard cock, Sephiroth?"

After a moment of consideration, he eventually nodded. "But not abnormal or anythin'. It just matches the rest of me."

"Oh dear," Genesis sighed his eyes roaming over Sephiroth's long limbs. "... I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"No thanks," Sephiroth said, looking back to the sunset. "Besides, I've seen your hard on a million times."

"Never up close and personal..." Genesis smiled flirtatiously.

"Gen... don't," Sephiroth said, looking at his friend apologetically. "Okay?"

"You're so boring and faithful! I wish you weren't you," Genesis frowned, slumping with his cheek in his hand. "I'm horny!"

"You wish I was Rufus?"

"God, no. I wish you were... Zachary Quinto," Genesis lingered on that thought with his eyes closed and his teeth biting his lower lip.

Sephiroth laughed, "I thought you were gonna say our Zack at first."

Genesis' eyes shot open and he shuddered. "Ew, Jesus God! Never! ... Who do you wish I was? And don't you dare say Cloud."

"I do wish you were Cloud, though."

"Pick someone else! Who would you let wreck your ass tonight? Someone you'd just bend over and take it like a slut from!"

Sephiroth pretended to ponder for a long moment, but it was a farce. The answer was immediate in his mind. "I guess it'd be... Bruce Campbell."

"Who?"

The only outlet Sephiroth had for his lust for Cloud were phone calls. And the only truly satisfying session they'd had was when Cloud snuck into the bathroom for a call when Cam was out. He knew Sephiroth would be in his room alone that evening and made his purpose clear from the very start of the conversation.

"How was your day?" Sephiroth had asked.

"Cut the bullshit and take off your pants," Was Cloud's reply.

The General nearly tripped over his eager feet when placing his 'DO NOT DISTURB' sign on his door to ward away invitations out. He then turned off his business cell phone and ripped his clothes off, wanting to give Cloud his undivided attention. He listened raptly as his boyfriend began to moan in his ear and describe what he was doing to himself.

The pictures only sweetened it. Cloud looked like a dirty, sweaty angel in his rumpled, halfway unbuttoned uniform. He was hard and ready, and had called prepared with lube and their Boyfriend. Sephiroth listened intently as Cloud stretched himself, nearly begging for pictures every few moments.

Soon Cloud was splayed across the toilet with his sneakers pressed against the shower door. Their Boyfriend was sliding in and out of his ass, making that deliciously wet noise of penetration. Cloud sent picture after picture, living through the eye of the phone's camera as he fucked himself for his pleasure, and for Sephiroth's.

"I don't wanna come..." Cloud groaned, his voice dark, yet broken with uncontrollable gasps. They'd been flirting, wishing, describing and touching themselves for nearly an hour, and they were both balancing on the edge.

"Why not?" Sephiroth asked, speeding up his own fist a little so he might reach that high along with him. "It'll feel so good baby... I wanna hear you."

Cloud sent another picture, this time the head of the dildo was poised at his opening while he gripped his cock hard, cutting off the eruption. Sephiroth was almost driven to anger by his longing because he was missing the sweetest moment of sex with Cloud; the perfect amount of lube, the perfect resistance, and the perfect position to thrust in and make Cloud's eyelids burst open with shock, then droop with desire. Cloud was about to come and Sephiroth longed to rock his body and hit every single spot inside that would make that boy scream his name.

As if Cloud could read minds he said, "You fuck me so good, Sephiroth... I need you to give it to me. I can't do it like you can."

"C'mon Cloud..." Sephiroth gently urged, although he agreed that whatever release they were about to get wouldn't be half of what they could have if they were actually together. "Just let it out, baby."

"No..." Cloud gasped, and there was a telltale buzzing noise that indicated he had finally felt brave enough to turn on the Boyfriend's vibration function. "Oh sh-shit, Seph... I'm w-waiting for you here just like this... 'til you come back to me."

There was another picture, slightly blurred by shivers but showed the Boyfriend pushed all the way into the pink hole. Cloud's knuckles were pale on his wet cock, and his feet were curling inside his shoes and arching the Converse inward on the shower door.

Sephiroth's brain did something odd: he could smell Cloud's sweat, his leaking semen and his beautiful natural scent amplified by passion. He could literally smell it all. The sense was so real and sudden that Sephiroth made a harsh choking sound as his cock pulsed with a thick release that painted his chest.

He gripped himself to try and stop it, but it was too late. So he embraced it instead of fighting it, and gasped as another hard pulse pushed more fluid to run over his fist. Smaller shocks trembled through his body, and he growled in bittersweet disappointment. "Look what you made me do..."

"What'd I make you do?" Cloud asked in a coy, breathless whisper.

Sephiroth quickly took a picture of the thick mess he was covered in, "You made me come all over myself."

"Mm..." Cloud giggled sweetly, and it was followed by an elongated purr of his name. "Seph... Oh, bullshit - I just got myself right in the fucking eye!"

"Are you serious?" Sephiroth snickered.

Cloud breathed heavily for a few moments, and finally cleared his throat. "... Uhm. Yeah, right in the eye."

"My poor baby," Sephiroth gave into relaxed laughter, still kneading himself slowly. "Snap a picture. I'm beggin' you."

A picture was sent and with a cheeky grin, Cloud's pink tongue was moving through thick fluid that had landed on his hair and in his left eye, and was running down his cheek. Cloud chuckled from the other end as he got up from the toilet with a stiff groan, "I had a fruit smoothie for lunch. My junk tastes kind of good right now."

"It always tastes good to me," Sephiroth smiled, even though it was a blatant lie. Usually the taste hovered between tolerable and cringe worthy, but the act itself was so sacred and intimate that he always forced it down without a complaint. "...you should lick it all up."

After a moment and a few smacks of his lips, Cloud paused. "... I feel like that should have been way more gross than it was."

"I feel like that shoulda taken a lot more convincing," Sephiroth remarked. "You didn't even skip a beat."

Cloud gasped. "... I'm turning into a pervert aren't I?"

"I'm pretty sure you always were one," Sephiroth told him.

While it was memorable and sweet, one decent mutual jerk off session in six weeks was not enough. He supposed he had finally reached the age when masturbation didn't have the zing it used to. When he was younger he used to get sprung just watching HBO, but lately he found himself needing much more visual and audio stimulation.

Sephiroth's lips ached for Cloud's, and his fingertips itched with a desire to touch soft skin. He supposed he understood why a man would be driven to cheat, but couldn't justify the action morally. And so many men and women did it right under their partner's nose... was the thrill really worth it? Or could any random man have the capacity to feel as good as Cloud did? Several SOLDIERs walked around the army bases looking perfectly capable.

It was a pretty evil line of thinking, but Sephiroth supposed he couldn't help it. He had a pulse, he was allowed to look. But touching was something that he wouldn't ever do. Cloud's little mishap with the other drummer was really just stupidity... he was now wiser, and knew better.

Cloud owned Sephiroth's heart, as well as his entire body. The only things that still roamed were his damn eyes.

Porn was nice, especially since he could find a vast selection of actors who resembled Cloud. But they always managed to do something that completely spoiled the moment. They would say something Cloud would never say, their harsh moans would grate on his nerves, a position would be far too preposterous, they'd have the nerve to pop some sort of drug during the sex scene, or the pretty young man would simply give the camera an empty, soulless stare that ate away at Sephiroth's arousal and turned it into pity.

So, Sephiroth stopped watching professionally produced porn. Amateur couples weren't as perfectly built and model caliber sexy, but their genuine pleasure and warm interactions were all kinds of hot. And straight guys being blindfolded and tricked into getting a blow job from another guy was pretty hot, too.

And sometimes watching straight porn was entertaining in a purely asexual way, only because women did far crazier things for money than Sephiroth's brain could even dream up. One of the most incredible feats he'd ever seen was watching a completely unattractive, middle aged housewife stuff a 2-liter of Pepsi up her snatch. He even emailed the video to Genesis, because damn!

"Big deal, Rufus can do that," Genesis emailed back, happy to supply photographic evidence as proof. "What can yours do?"

Cloud never had to "do" anything. And as Sephiroth's time touring the bases drew to a close, he found himself less and less enthralled by simulated sex. While it had gotten him through a rough couple of weeks, porn quickly became a bore.

No porn star could ever compare to Cloud Duffy Strife. That bouncy blonde hair, those enormous blue eyes, that tan skin, that gorgeous smile, that little outie belly button... Sephiroth knew he'd never, ever be tempted to stray from that man. Cloud was perfection right down to the smallest detail. He was real, warm, and a deep pool of emotion. He said interesting things, he had interesting ideas, and he never took 'no' for an answer.

There was nothing that could replace Cloud, and Sephiroth loved him like mad. This longing burned in his mind, in his chest, and in other parts of his body that longed to express it to Cloud. Being alone in a guest room at a military base never felt lonelier.

During promotion season his days were predictable, easy, and downright fun. It was a pampered little respite from the trials of being a General.

Sephiroth couldn't wait for it to be fucking over already.

The store that Cameron and Cloud had bought Halloween costumes at the year prior had closed down due to a class action lawsuit. Apparently, the monsters that popped out got a little handsy with female customers. And an old lady shopping there almost died of a heart attack when someone dressed as the Grimm Reaper refused to leave her alone.

Oh, and there was the little matter of video cameras bring discovered in every single fitting room. Cloud had great hopes that some fat, slimy loser got off on watching him change into the Condor Scout uniform. He liked feeling appreciated.

So Cam and Cloud went to a nearby specialty store instead. Cloud had to admit that he was a little bit relieved, and could shop in peace without worrying about some random monster attacking him. But while this store lacked spooky perverts, it made up for it with higher prices and a crappy selection.

Cloud complained, "I just don't know what I want to be this year. What should I get for Sephiroth?"

Cameron was thumbing through the racks beside him. "No kinda plan at all?"

"No..." Cloud sighed. Nothing seemed good enough, sexy enough, original enough.

"Youse outta match each other. Why don'tcha look in da couples' section?" Cam suggested.

"Hello? Totally lame," Cloud said, stomping a little bit as he left the aisle for the next one. "I do want to match him, but everything just seems so cheap and stupid."

"Didja have any ideas at all? I mean, even a dumb ass idea might lead to a better one."

Cloud wisped his fingertips over a selection of fabulous wigs. "... I wanted Seph to be in really pretty drag, but he's against it. Like if he was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, I'd make a totally cute Toto. Ya know? Something like that."

"Are ya tryin' to ruin his life?"

"Oh please. People in Shin-Ra are complete freaks, a little drag wouldn't have killed his scary reputation."

"You could put on the drag, right?" Cam covered his mouth with his hand, unable to hold in his laughter at the suggestion.

"That is so expected though!" Cloud whined. "I wouldn't be funny at all in drag, I'd just be another effeminate dude in a dress, no big deal. Sephiroth would be funny as hell, though. Can you imagine that body in some slutty little cocktail dress and fuck-me pumps? It would have been perfect!"

Cameron was lost in thought. "... I bet I'd be pretty funny in drag."

"Please don' t go there."

They left the high priced Halloween shop in search of better inspiration. There were several others like it on the upper plate, but Cloud decided to drag Cam underneath to the downtown slums to shop. If nothing else, some lame, slutty gothic getup from Dirty Rubbers would have to do. Although, that would be the very last resort.

In the very first shop they went into, Cameron found a red Power Rangers costume that he couldn't live without and was very satisfied with his purchase. He wasn't dating Michelle anymore, and was happy to be free of the confines of a relationship. He planned to use his Ranger powers to screw as many girls as possible.

Like any man whose shopping agenda had been fulfilled, he tried to rush Cloud along. But to his horror, they stopped in a few slum malls that were hidden away in alleys, they went into costume stores, sex shops, drug stores, and thrift stores. They shopped exhaustively, searching through every option but still nothing caught Cloud's eye.

"It's our only day off and it's almost four! We been shoppin' since fuckin' nine dis mornin'! I gots tha new season of True Blood and I wanna watch it!" Cam begged, dragging his feet on the sidewalk and knocking his bag into Cloud. "Everywhere's got tha same exact shit. Just pick somethin' already!"

Cloud bit his lip, knowing that Dirty Rubbers was just a few blocks away. "Alright, one last place. I swear I'll find something there and we can go home."

"Dis is the last store or I'm leavin' your ass," Cam warned. "Do ya got any idea how tha last season ended? It was a fuckin' cliffhanger and I wanna - "

"I don't give a shit," Cloud went into the shop, smiling at the familiar clove and sweat smell of the place. He paused to nod at the cashier, who was not the sexy little porn star from last time.

This time it was an older, heavily muscular and burly man in a revealing leather fetish outfit. The get up actually kept getting worse the lower one's eyes traveled - the crowning accessory being a tiny, bejeweled g-string that barely contained the man's garbage. A thick, dark jungle of unruly pubic hair sprouted generously from all edges.

Cloud gawked in terror before averting his eyes. Twinks like himself were like chew toys for bears; Cloud could have literally crawled inside the man's ass like a gerbil. Cam had no idea about the delicate nature of the universe, and stared at the bear's crotch for a moment too long.

"Hey little cub..." The cashier rumbled, leaning forward and making the counter groan under his muscular form.

"Uh... hi," Cam answered, and followed on Cloud's heels with a shrill whisper. "What's a cub?"

Cloud stifled a giggle. "It's nothing to be offended about. He's saying you're masculine, but very cute."

Cam frowned. "Be my boyfriend 'til we get outta here."

"Shotgun on butch!" Cloud cried as he wrapped an arm around Cameron's waist territorially. He sifted through the shop's Halloween selection with one hand, leaving the other protectively splayed on Cam's back. The costumes were mostly gothic and vampiric, and nothing that Cloud was interested in.

He was greatly disappointed, until he turned a corner and spotted the most amazing ensemble he'd ever laid eyes on. A mannequin stood next to the rack, seductively posing in what was surely the most elusive costume of the year. It was something that was normally home made by a technologically savvy nerd with amazing engineering skills but a saggy body.

They were Tron lightsuits.

But not just Tron lightsuits. They were sexy, extremely well made, tight Tron lightsuits with glowing strips that accented every limb..

Cloud marveled at the amazing attention to detail. The lines of light perfectly accentuated every dip and line of the male body. It was beautiful. All of the suits were black vinyl, but the lights came in bright red, soft blue, teal green, a very gay purple, and an ominous yellow.

Cloud stared, his mouth hanging open as he imagined Sephiroth's body wrapped tight in vinyl and glowing yellow strips of light. He would wear the same thing, but with the softer, more innocent looking blue. The pair of them were going to make men come in their pants with just one glance. They were going to make women instantly pregnant with millions of sexy babies by just walking past them. They were going to set off car alarms, make mountains crumble, make satellites come crashing back to Earth.

Armageddon would occur due to the rampant sexiness they were going to cause in these costumes.

"Ouch!" Cam cried. "Who'd pay 250 gil for a costume from dat piece of shit movie?"

... Leave it to the straight man to notice the price tag, of all things. But Christ sake, that'd be 500 gil!

Cloud technically had the money... but was he willing to spend that much on a set of costumes? He grimaced. "... You think if I suck off the gorilla at the counter that he'd give me a discount?"

Cameron sighed. "Cloud, we been shoppin' all fuckin' day. Dis is the only costume ya looked at for more'n ten seconds. Just ask the dude if he'll knock off a few gil."

Cloud thumbed through the rack eagerly, ensuring that there was one big enough for Sephiroth, and one that would suit his smaller stature. He then shyly wandered around the store, making eye contact with the huge bear sitting at the register. Finally, he mustered the courage to approach him. "... Hello, sir. Those Tron costumes over there... they're cool, but are you selling many this year? I don't wanna spend that much if everyone's gonna be wearing one."

The bear shook his head while stroking his beard. "Nope. Haven't even sold one, yet."

That made Cloud feel a little more confident. He tried not to look at the man's pubic hair as he continued, "I see. Do you have any... uh... sales going on right now?"

"On the day before Halloween? Hell no."

Cloud deflated a little bit inside, but persisted. "I want two of them. I need a small with blue lights for me, and a large with yellow lights for my boyfriend. Would you take... 300 gil?"

"They run 250 each," The man answered.

Cloud flinched a little. "How about... 400?"

When he realized he was being haggled with, the bear sighed. "Look, kid. I have an entire rack of those things, but just because they're not selling yet doesn't mean they won't. Unless you're willing to pay full price, fuck off."

Cloud wasn't ready to give up. "I really want to get these costumes, but I can't justify spending that much money on them. Is there any way you can give me a discount?"

"Are you trying to bribe me with sex?" The bear asked point blank. "I hate to tell you sweetheart, but you're not my type. You're like a sprig of mint, and I'm a man who needs a big, juicy steak. You dig?"

"I'm heartbroken," Cloud muttered. "Seriously though, what if I do some work for you?"

"Excuse me?"

"What if I like... help out around the store? Could I have a discount then?"

The man drummed his fingers on his cheek in through. "My name is Gus. This is my store."

"I love your store, Gus. I'm Cloud."

"What's your real name?"

"Cloud Strife, sir. I've got my ID with me if you want to look."

"I do want to look," He challenged. Cloud dug into his back pocket and produced his military school identification. "Shin-Ra Military Academy, huh?"

"Yes, sir," Cloud nodded proudly, taking back his ID and standing at attention.

"Go clean the fitting room. And I mean spotless."

"Done!" Cloud cried, dashing towards it blindly.

"There's cleaning supplies in the back room!" Gus called. "But before you start working, you need to put on a pair of tighty whities and some angel wings. I wanna see a deep wedgie!"

"Double done!" Cloud cried in excitement. He rushed to retrieve the requested outfit, leaving Cameron to follow behind him in agony.

"Dude, what the fuck are you doin'?" He asked, tilting his head.

"Go home and watch True Blood!" Cloud cried, and slammed the door to the fitting room.

The shop owner thought Cloud would help out for about fifteen minutes until he got bored. He never would have imagined the blonde teenager's persistence, and was surprised by the amount of work he did that afternoon. Like any disciplined military school student, Cloud washed the windows, swept the floor, arranged the new merchandise, helped customers shop, updated the concert posting board, and went to the post office to mail a package for an online order - all in tight underwear and angel wings.

In the end Gus let Cloud have Sephiroth's suit for free. He told Cloud to consider it an employee discount.

"Feel honored. I hire my Dirty cashiers based purely on sex appeal," Gus said unto Cloud. This was odd coming from a 400-pound bear in tiny panties, who somewhat resembled Hagrid from Harry Potter. "That, and you actually cleaned the fitting room. I've been trying to get the assholes who work here to clean it for months."

Cloud was going to work at Dirty Rubbers on Wednesday nights after school - the shift nobody else wanted, because a bar down the street always had a great party night. He'd also make himself available to work more around holidays and on select weekends when Sephiroth was away.

Cloud would run the register, clean the store and flaunt his ass. In exchange, he'd receive ten gil an hour, an employee discount, and the prestige of working at the coolest store downtown. Gus didn't seem to understand why Cloud was so excited to have a crummy retail job, but for him, it was going to be his fun activity away from real work.

He shook hands with his new boss and skipped out of the store with a new job, two amazing Halloween costumes, and the knowledge that he'd be in Sephiroth's arms in less than a day. It was the sort of happiness that needed to be savored slowly, so Cloud sat in silence on the train ride home and stared out his window with a smile.

It widened when one of the mako reactors let out a burning hot puff of multicolored steam, and filled the air with a shrill squeal.

On the last morning of October, Cloud stood under the steamy hot water in the locker rooms and made passionate love to the wall. Three fingers deep inside himself, he whispered Sephiroth's name. Some pathetic things never changed.

The rest of the day seemed to go on forever and ever. Classes went on as usual, every lap was run, every quiz was taken, and every moment of the day was played out in its entirety. And other than some frosted pumpkin cookies in the cafeteria, Halloween was wholly uncelebrated at the Shin-Ra Military Academy. Cloud hinted to a few of his teachers that he wouldn't be there the following day, and it seemed like most of the student body had the same idea and would indulge in a long weekend.

The final hour of the day was usually the most enjoyable; he loved donning cleats and soccer shorts and kicking the ball around with his classmates. It reminded him of being a little kid again, only better this time because he wasn't in Nibelheim and his shins were in no danger of being gay-bashed. But on this day Soccer Hour just seemed like gratuitous torture.

Cloud wanted to see Sephiroth... touch him, kiss him, make him smile... that smile was all he could think about. Slowly time marched on, and there was only half an hour of Soccer left. Then twenty minutes. Then fifteen minutes. Ten minutes. Then only five.

And then finally, the bell's final ring set Cloud free. He fled from the field as fast as he could, pushing anyone out of his way that dared slow him down. Papers, books, pencils, jock straps, and first year cadets were strewn about in Cloud's wake. He slammed his door shut against the angry world and stripped himself naked.

He showered, dried his hair, ironed it, and was dressed in less than fifteen minutes. His bag was already packed, so he only spared Psycho a small kiss on top of his fuzzy head before darting back out into the hallway. Cameron was strolling lazily up the staircase, and barely managed a greeting before Cloud collided with him and kissed his chin.

"Be smart, be safe, don't fight, wear a condom, and don't you dare take acid because it made you see dinosaurs and we could have a random drug test at any time - " Cloud spoke frantically, then hugged his best friend once before calling out his farewell on his way down the stairs.

Sephiroth said he needed to stay at work until six, but Cloud refused to accept that. He ran all the way to HQ, cutting the usual ten-minute walk down to a six minute dash. With a little experience under his belt, he was able to navigate the huge elevators without incident. He speedily trotted through the executive floor, until finally he found his beloved's secretary hard at work and the General's office door standing open.

Shelly glanced up and smiled while still speaking on the phone, and waved him in with her pen. Cloud waved back and crept up to the doorway.

He peered around the doorframe at Sephiroth, who was seated at his desk. He was in full uniform, and his arms were folded in front of him as he stared at his computer screen in businessman-like work trance. But that expression changed completely when his eyes flicked to the blonde head peeking into the room.

His entire demeanor seemed to relax and a sharp toothed, handsome grin instantly lit up Sephiroth's face.

Cloud wished he could take a picture with his mind and keep that smile in a frame for the rest of his life. As a human being, he knew he had a greater purpose than to merely hang out with his boyfriend. But from the moment he'd laid eyes on him through a television screen, it felt like he was supposed to find Sephiroth. The fact that in reality, they seemed genuinely perfect for each other made Cloud think it was divine planning that they should be together.

Still, it was scary to think that his main reason for getting out of bed everyday a man someone who might eventually hurt him... many people told him that putting all his faith in a man at his age was foolish. His friends and his relatives seemed to relish in informing Cloud that one day he would probably lose this man's love. They thought they were being kind in preparing Cloud for the devastation of heartbreak, for the universe had a way of setting people up to see them crumble.

They couldn't have known that their doubts fed the dark, self-depreciating voice in Cloud's mind. That voice had consumed him for years, and always threatened to engulf the happy person that he strived to be. Although it was probably true that one day the General wouldn't want him, anymore...

"Baby!" Sephiroth sprung out of his seat. "Get in here."

... that day was not this day. So fuck it.

"Hi!" Cloud laughed, feeling nothing but elation as he entered the office and approached his lover. He only had time to let his bag drop to the floor before he was enveloped tightly in warm arms. He pressed his cheek to Sephiroth's collar bone, and could clearly hear and feel his heartbeat thudding through his lover's body. Nothing ever felt as good. "... I missed you so much!"

"Missed you, too," Sephiroth's face was rubbing against his hair, and Cloud felt his soft mouth move down against his ear and press against his neck. "Damn, you smell good."

The compliment made Cloud inhale Sephiroth's sweet scent in return, and he agreed with a hiccup before he began to sob. For many weeks Cloud had been very tough and manly and hadn't cried once. But suddenly tears were pouring from his eyes and pooling against Sephiroth's leather-crossed chest. They were joyous tears of course, and Cloud smiled brightly up at him to ensure Sephiroth that not a single drop was negative. "Sorry for crying on you. I can't stop it, I'm happy."

"I don't mind," He kissed Cloud's cheeks despite the salty flavoring.

Cloud sniffed hard, and tightened his fingers into Sephiroth's coat. "Got you. I'm not letting you ever leave again."

"Okay," Sephiroth submitted, his lips finally traveling along Cloud's jaw and ending at his mouth.

Six weeks was a long time after all, and it showed in the clumsiness between their lips. Kissing after a long break always had a touch of awkwardness at first, as if they'd thought about this moment for the entire time apart and didn't know what to do now that it was finally happening. Sephiroth's tongue bumped too hard against Cloud's lips, who took a moment too long to open his mouth and accept it.

But once the kinks were ironed out, it was poetry. Cloud went up on his toes, taking two silky handfuls of silver hair and curling his fists at the base of Sephiroth's skull. It was a possessive and strong action, and Sephiroth crouched a little bit lower to help Cloud exhibit that side of himself better. Meanwhile his gloved hands slid appreciatively down Cloud's lean frame, squeezing his hips hard enough to make all of Cloud's breath come out in a quick rush. His breathing became heavy as Sephiroth's fingers spread over his lower back and pulled him closer.

"Happy Anniversary," Cloud whispered heatedly, moving kisses over Sephiroth's nose and cheeks.

Sephiroth caught Cloud's lips with his a few times before he responded. "You too. I have a present."

"You do?" Cloud smiled. "I have one for you, too!"

"Can I give you mine, first?" Sephiroth asked, closing his office door for a little privacy. He then went back to his desk and retrieved a very large, very heterosexual anniversary bag with a black and white photograph of two hands holding; one of them being a distinctly female hand. Sephiroth noticed Cloud's bemusement, "I'm sorry about the chick. This is all I could find that wasn't birthday-ish."

"It's okay," Cloud chuckled as he examined it closer. He then peeked curiously inside. "Can I open it now?"

"No, I want you to just fuckin' stare at it."

Cloud eagerly moved the tissues aside and found a new outfit. He loved that even though Sephiroth's personal style was modest and understated, he encouraged his boyfriend's flamboyant taste in clothes. He had chosen Cloud a pair of dark skinny jeans with bright white stitching and bleached hand prints on the back pockets that suggested the wearer's ass was being pawed at, a tight yellow hoodie with a militant Wutain logo on the back, and a very small, very punk rock black t-shirt with the same logo on it. A little more exploration and Cloud discovered a matching pair of tighty-whitey style underwear. "Oh wow! Thank you Seph, this stuff is cute! I really love it! Who's the designer?"

"It's this really popular brand in Wutai, all those little short trendy kids are wearin' it right now. They reminded me of you, so I asked the emperor s daughter where to buy it. She was all embarrassed to tell me, because the brand name literally means 'Sexy Boy Slut'."

"Cute!" Cloud gasped sharply, suddenly appreciating the clothes even more. Then he rolled his eyes at Sephiroth. "I'm flattered that you think of me as your slut."

"Hey, I didn't know what it meant, I just liked the clothes. Id'a even bought somethin' for myself, but I'm too big to fit any of it and it kinda broke my heart. Check it out, I had to buy you a large."

"Holy shit, you're right!" Cloud giggled at the tag. He was sort of excited to have something in his wardrobe that wasn't a small or extra small. And a large? Only the manliest of men required a large!

"There's one more thing in the bag," Sephiroth pointed out, drawing Cloud out of his size musings.

Cloud folded his new clothes and then looked in the bag. Waiting at the bottom was a homemade CD in a paper sleeve case.

Cloud slowly picked it up, feeling a rush of happy adrenaline in his stomach. He savored the moment, knowing that the clothes were just a fun bonus and that this was the real thing he'd cherish long after he outgrew them or the style faded. He opened pulled the CD out of the sleeve and saw that Sephiroth had written 'First Anniversary Jams' on it. He smiled up at Sephiroth, blinking to fight tears. "... I can't wait to listen to this. Thank you so much."

"You're welcome," Sephiroth tilted his face up and placed a small, lingering kiss on his lips. The feather light touch tingled all the way down to Cloud's groin.

Cloud shifted a little, then went to his own bag. He was careful not to reveal the Halloween costumes, and instead pulled out Sephiroth's gift. He'd wrapped it in the school's newspaper, which was terribly cheap but at least it wasn't some boygirl love bag. He handed it to Sephiroth, who sighed. "You need to stop gettin' me stuff."

"You need to shut the fuck up and open your present," Cloud replied. "You're my boyfriend and I like getting you stuff."

"Okay, fine," Sephiroth chuckled as he ripped the present open then let out a genuine sigh of admiration at what he found. It was a DVD box set of all the award-winning horror movies that were released at the huge annual indie film festival held in Icicle Town. Sephiroth had mentioned that they were his favorite kind, because they weren't rated by the International Film Board, and they could be as disgusting, degrading and sinful as they wanted to be. Sephiroth held the DVD box in two hands like a child, examining all the extras on the back of the box. "Oh, shit! This is from this year? I didn't even think this would be in stores yet! How'd you get this so quick?"

Cloud rocked on his heels with a blush, absolutely thrilled with Sephiroth's reception of his gift, "I preordered it online months ago."

"You're awesome," Sephiroth gave Cloud a solid kiss on the mouth. "I love you. I've loved you all year."

"I love you way more, and for way longer than just one year," Cloud smiled, teasing Sephiroth's lips with his teeth.

"If only I'd known... I'da come out to Nibelheim and kidnapped you a long time ago," Sephiroth suggested, utterly indulging in the sticky sweet couple talk. It just felt necessary to let Cloud know that he wasn't alone in how he felt, or in his appreciation of how important this day was to them both. But then in rebellion of the 'I love you more' shit, he lowered his voice and let his breath come out hot against Cloud's ear. "Gettin' a taste of your sweet little underage ass would have been worth spendin' some time behind bars."

On a surge of lust, Cloud's hands suddenly tightened in Sephiroth's hair and pulled back, causing his throat to arch. Sephiroth swallowed and his graceful neck pulsed beautifully. Cloud took the time to let his tongue dance over the ridges and up to Sephiroth's chin, and opened his eyes to find electric green ones slitted open, glaring back at him through his thick, dark lashes.

Sephiroth's hands then cupped his ass and hoisted him up, forcing their lips to crash together. Cloud wrapped his legs tight around Sephiroth's waist, pressing against his body without shame. He couldn't have been able to say where they were, or even what Sephiroth was wearing. He wanted his lover, and assumed that the rage of his hormones had transported him to a magical land in which pure lust incarnated into the form of General Sephiroth.

The timing was right. The mood was right. It'd been weeks and it was their fucking anniversary; sex was a necessity.

But while it was extremely tempting, Sephiroth didn't want to make love in his office, or anywhere in the Shin-Ra building. Almost every single square foot of it was under surveillance, and if they were to engage in sex... every Turk from here to the Lifestream would be able to watch. They'd record it, and probably even sell it. Vincent would eventually see it. Hell, Vincent might even be watching at that exact moment, snickering with a cigarette in his mouth and a cup of coffee on his knee, placing bets on which one of them was going to top.

That was a sobering thought. He separated from Cloud's lips, and put a finger over them. "Shh, Cloud. Hey. Cloud?"

Cloud wouldn't be shushed, and instead sucked Sephiroth's entire finger into his mouth. The hard little piercing in the middle of Cloud's warm tongue scraped gently, and Sephiroth's eyes nearly crossed with desire. But then he imagined Vincent's slightly amused yet disapproving face and tried to pull his finger back, "Cloud. Knock it off, lemme grab my stuff and we'll get outta here - "

"I wanna grab your stuff instead," Cloud purred as he released Sephiroth's wet finger with a pop.

Sephiroth chuckled at the nonsensical come-on. "Okay, whatever. But not here, this is my office - "

"Fuck me," Cloud breathed, and then as if it felt good just to say it he repeated himself. "Fuck me right here on your fucking desk. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me- "

Sephiroth's will was crumbling. He loved the way Cloud said 'fook'... "No baby, this is where I work. We can't- "

"Please?" Cloud begged, his lips curving down into the sexiest pout Sephiroth had ever seen in his life.

Sephiroth had an idea. He put Vincent out of his mind and dropped Cloud to the floor and pushed him against the back of his desk. Cloud's eyes cleared of the misty lust spell they were under and looked up at him in an expression akin to fear. Once Sephiroth had his attention, he took Cloud's arms and twisted them behind his back, putting just enough pressure on his joints that Cloud winced.

Unfortunately this tactic made Sephiroth's body strain in desire to keep going and 'fook' Cloud like the naughty, horny little Cadet that he was. But if he wanted to set real ground rules of not messing around in public places where they could be seen or heard, he had to do it then. It was only going to get worse when Cloud became a SOLDIER and worked in the building daily. The temptation was always going to be there, but if they wanted any sort of privacy they needed to refrain from it.

They'd done too much, already. Every kiss was like another potential gil sign to prying eyes. So Sephiroth remained calm, despite his aching body. "What did I say?"

"... No sex in your office?" Cloud guessed shyly, then added. "Sir."

"And why can't we have sex in here?" Sephiroth asked, nearly shaking as he suddenly aware of his hips still settled between Cloud's long, warm thighs.

"... Because," Cloud whispered, but his eyes lidded slightly. He glanced down to where his jean-covered erection was pressing against the bulge in Sephiroth's pants. "This is your office. Sir."

"And there are cameras in here. I've told you that before."

"I forgot," Cloud whispered, looking back up at his lover's eyes. "... Sorry."

Sephiroth lowered his voice so only Cloud would be able to hear, barely speaking at all against his ear. "... It scares me. Someone's always watchin' me."

"Oh... I'm sorry, Seph," Cloud whispered back, the lust receding from his eyes. "I promise I won't do this again. I'm sorry."

Sephiroth eased the pressure on Cloud's wrists, and dropped a kiss onto his nose, "You're gonna get it tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day. You just have to wait until we're somewhere private. Okay?"

"Okay," Cloud nodded and although it was difficult, he moved his hips away from Sephiroth's in a display of self-control.

"Good boy," Sephiroth gave him one more kiss before releasing him, and went to his desk. "I'm gonna save some stuff real quick and we're outta here."

Cloud gave a frustrated sigh, but didn't follow him to the other side of his desk out of respect for the General's privacy. Instead he wandered around the room until he reached the window, and looked out across the landscape of Midgar. The sun was setting earlier and earlier as the year neared towards winter, and it painted the sky a smoggy orange hue.

He smiled, suddenly remembering that he had a secret! The costumes! Cloud hopped a little, forgetting all about his unbearable erection. "Hurry! We have to get ready for the party! I can't wait to show you your costume!"

Sephiroth grunted softly, pointedly ignoring the subject. "Zack's gonna be at our place in about an hour."

Cloud's heart lingered over the word 'our'. When he was done savoring it, he stayed on the opposite side of Sephiroth's desk and leaned on his fists with a smile. "Aren't you curious what your costume is?"

Sephiroth's computer gave the melodic noise of shutting down, and he continued to ignore Cloud's baiting. "Should I grab a back up costume from the uniform storehouse? I mean, in case the humiliating one you got me doesn't fit?"

"I promise it'll fit, and it will not be humiliating!" Cloud grinned, going over to his bag to clutch it against his chest protectively. "I'm wearing the same costume! We'll totally match! We'll be the cutest couple ever!"

This offered Sephiroth very little comfort. He cleared off his desk and unplugged his electronics before putting a hand between Cloud's shoulder blades and guiding him out of the room. He locked his office behind them and nodded to his secretary. "You gonna be at the party tonight?"

"Yup!" She chirped. "So uh... you're still taking Friday off?"

"I'm not showin' my face 'til Monday afternoon," He assured her. "But you'll be here to field my calls, right?"

"... Right," she lied. Sephiroth let it go; everyone needed a break from work now and then.

The ride to his loft was spent with Cloud kicking his feet and asking Sephiroth to guess what their costumes were.

"... Superheroes."

"Guess again!" Cloud prodded frantically. "You'll never fucking guess!"

"... Vampires."

"No! We're something cute, not something gross or scary!"

"... Puppies."

"Not cute in a stupid way! Cute in a slutty way!"

"... Prostitutes."

"Seeeph, you're not even trying!"

When they got to the apartment, Cloud clamored up the stairs in excitement. In a lapse of his usual etiquette, he used his own key to barge inside and raced to the bedroom to change. "Stay in the living room! I'll put it on real quick!"

"I wanna take my clothes off..." Sephiroth complained. "And I was gonna try and get some ass before Zack gets here."

"There's no time! Just wait a minute!" Cloud howled, and slammed the bedroom door shut. Sephiroth dropped to the couch and began to undo the straps on his boots. He'd gotten both off when he heard his door open and Cloud's footsteps tiptoe down the hall. He called, "Alright Seph, close your eyes!"

Sephiroth did. "Okay, they're shut."

"You promise?"

"Yes!" Sephiroth barked, finally losing a little bit of patience at this game. As he listened to Cloud's quiet footsteps into the room, he nearly opened his eyes to defiantly spoil his surprise. But since Cloud had obviously gone through so much trouble and was so excited, Sephiroth would let him have his grand reveal of the ensemble they'd be wearing that evening.

Cloud took a breath. "Okay, look."

Sephiroth opened his eyes, and he took a long moment to absorb what he was seeing. Cloud was posing before him in a black, skintight catsuit, and he was holding another one in his hand.

He kind of looked like cat woman without the ears. When Sephiroth opened his mouth to inquire, Cloud reached behind himself and hit some sort of button. Suddenly there were soft, neon blue lines of light accenting his limbs, ribs, and groin. It looked vaguely familiar but Sephiroth couldn't quite place it. But it didn't matter what sort of sci-fi movie it originated from... the effect on Cloud's slim, muscular body was awe-inspiring.

With a coy smile, Cloud turned himself smoothly around on the ball of his foot, revealing the costume from all angles. It had some sort of light pack on the back, where Sephiroth assumed the battery power was located. Cloud looked over his shoulder, "... Do you like it?"

"What's it from?" Sephiroth asked, his eyes still roaming up and down Cloud's limbs.

"Fuck!" Cloud sighed, dropping his seductive stance. "It's from Tron. You didn't see it, did you?"

"I didn t see it, but I recognized it. I just wasn't sure," Sephiroth clarified, then rested his chin in his hand. "... Is that a one piece?"

"No. There's a top and bottom," Cloud explained, inching the top away from the pants a bit to expose skin. "And it's not as tight as it looks. It's pretty stretchy so you won't be constricted or anything. There are wires but they don't touch your skin, they're all tucked away."

"Lemme look atcha," Sephiroth invited, spreading his legs a little on the couch.

Cloud seemed to deflate a little bit at Sephiroth's completely blank expression, but he stepped over to where his boyfriend was seated. He feared the worst. "... If you don't like it I'll go drive back to HQ and get you something else."

Sephiroth reached out and pulled Cloud closer. He ran his fingers over the lighted strips, feeling a slight warmth. "... They don't get too hot, do they?"

"No, they're kind of padded underneath. You won't feel anything..." Cloud answered, holding Sephiroth's costume out to him uncertainly.

He took it, but set it beside himself on the couch without looking at it. He reached out to put both hands on Cloud's hips, and turned him to inspect the costume up close. "Were they expensive?"

"No," Cloud lied.

"So you won't care if I just... completely fucking wreck these tonight?"

The question was asked so casually that Cloud nearly missed it. He caught his breath, looking down at Sephiroth's unchanged expression. "...What do you mean?"

Sephiroth finally looked up at Cloud's face. "I'm trying to figure out how I can fuck you without taking this off of you."

Cloud gigged in shock, and arched back a little as Sephiroth's hands tightened on his hips and brought him to stand between his spread legs. "You can do whatever you want. It's not like we can wear something like this twice..."

"Doesn't look like there's any wiring around the crotch. So... maybe scissors..." Sephiroth thought out loud, running two fingers in a snipping motion over Cloud's straining groin and up between his legs. "I could cut this off of you bit by bit... just enough to get inside."

Cloud gasped, stretching the sound out as Sephiroth's fingers pressed against his balls, making blood roar through his veins. Those hot hands moved over his arousal, rubbing with only enough pressure to make Cloud's toes curl against the floor. Sephiroth's hands flattened against his inner thigh, patting in a soothing manner before sliding up and over Cloud's firm stomach. "... That's fuckin' sexy."

Cloud swallowed, backing away from Sephiroth slowly. "Put yours on for me?"

Sephiroth's eyes followed his as he stood up from the couch with his costume. Cloud took his hand and turned around, quickly walked towards the bedroom with a little extra glide in his step, smiling to himself when Sephiroth jogged a little to keep up.

Once he got to the bedroom, he reached out to press the tiny button that made Sephiroth's suit light up. "Your lights are yellow."

Sephiroth held it up to examine it. "Is there a difference between yellow and blue?"

"Yellow is very, very evil," Cloud grinned, hugging Sephiroth's side before diving onto the mattress to gawk.

Sephiroth took his clothes off, baring his succulent nudity to Cloud's thirsty eyes. He couldn't resist getting up onto his knees on the mattress, craning his neck up for a kiss. Sephiroth stepped a little closer to him, giving him a small peck on the lips before straightening his back and bringing his partial arousal near Cloud's mouth in an obvious suggestion.

'I'm not gonna suck myself,' Sephiroth's penis told him bluntly.

Instead of paying attention to it, Cloud kissed Sephiroth's stomach, his hips, and his finely tuned upper thighs. His cock hardened, filling out until it lifted itself heavily, straining desperately to get Cloud's attention. He kissed the skin of Sephiroth's groin, letting his cheek rub against his cock as he licked a warm, wet line from his pubic hair up to his belly button.

Cloud looked up, his lips moving against Sephiroth's skin, "The suit is pretty clingy in the crotch. Maybe you should put some undies on. I'm wearing a jock strap."

"Uh huh..." Sephiroth murmured softly. He wasn't listening, instead he buried a hand in Cloud's hair and attempted to gently nudge his head back down to his neglected cock.

"Uh huh..." Cloud echoed, kissing his toned stomach once more before shaking the oppressive hand off of his head. "Now get dressed! I wanna see you in your costume already!"

Sephiroth huffed a little before he went to his closet in defeat. Cloud watched him retrieve a pair of boxer briefs and step into them, carefully arranging his raging arousal into a comfortable position. It pushed against the thin fabric of the underwear beautifully, making Sephiroth's long, sinewy form even more alluring.

Cloud began to swing his feet behind himself on the bed, tilting his head with a sigh. "You're so pretty..."

Sephiroth then came back to where his costume was lying next to Cloud, smiling as he stepped into the pants portion. They hugged the contours of his legs, but almost weren't long enough to cover the entire length of them. Way too much ankle was showing, but would easily be concealed by boots. Sephiroth then shrugged into the top half, pulling the stretchy vinyl-like fabric over his torso.

The construct of the outfit was so simple. But with that tight black fabric and those brightly lit accent lights... it was like Sephiroth was suddenly some space traveler from the future to steal Cloud's soul. Cloud moved up onto his knees again, unable to take his eyes off of Sephiroth's body. "... You look really hot."

"What are we doin' for shoes?" Sephiroth asked.

Cloud blinked, shaking his head a little. "Oh, I'm just putting on combat boots. You should, too. You've almost got a high water thing going on."

"You know I have issues with pants..." Sephiroth said softly, putting a knee on the mattress next to Cloud and reaching out to stroke his hair. "Thanks for the costume, I really do like it. We'll have fun tonight."

Cloud sighed through his nose, reaching out to touch Sephiroth's thigh. The lights were getting warm beneath his hands. "I'm tempted to stay right here... I'm sure we can make our own fun."

"Next year let's be zombies," Sephiroth joked. "Gross fuckin' zombies. It'll be much easier to leave home."

They both laughed together, but very suddenly the laughter morphed into heated kisses. Cloud frantically rolled over onto his back, and Sephiroth fell on top of him, pushing down with all of his weight. Cloud managed to get a leg out from between them and hooked it around Sephiroth's hips.

Cloud felt like a bubbling pot of water that was finally boiling over. He couldn't take anymore; his boyfriend was driving him wild and after more than a month without it, he needed Sephiroth's physical love. He wanted a long, drawn out, mindless, agonizing fuck that was so deep it hurt. He wanted Sephiroth's cock imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He wanted Sephiroth's come jetting inside him, he wanted to feel that man tremble underneath him and look at him like he was the only good thing that existed in the world.

And more than anything, he wanted to come back down off of that high and lay still beneath his sheets. He wanted fingertips and passion, words and kisses until they fired each other up again. Cloud wanted these things so badly he whimpered into Sephiroth's mouth before turning away from the kiss with a gasp. "Make the fucking call. Tell Zack we aren't going anywhere tonight. Please?"

Sephiroth's lips were reddened and wet, and for a sweet moment he looked like a confused child. Then his features collected themselves into hardened resolve. "... No."

"Why not?" Cloud asked, stealing another kiss. "You don't really wanna go to some dumb party, anyways."

"I wanna go out," Sephiroth's eyes were flicking between Cloud and the clock, trying to figure out how to have a satisfying sex session, clean up, and answer the door for Zack in less than fifteen minutes. "You got us such cool costumes - "

"I don't care about the stupid costumes! You're all I want!" Cloud whined passionately, stretching his neck out to give Sephiroth the kiss that would change his mind.

Thier lips rolled together for a few more moments until Sephiroth separated his tongue from Cloud's. "You'll be glad you went, I promise. Free drinks all night. I'll dance with you all you want. And we'll leave real early. And then later..." Sephiroth trailed off with a hot kiss to Cloud's ear. "Later, you can chew me up and spit me out. But let's go have some fun first."

Cloud chuckled, shrinking away from the ticklish kiss. "Okay."

"You hungry? Want me to make you somethin' to eat?" Sephiroth asked, smoothly pushing himself up off of Cloud and then holding out a hand to help him slide off the bed.

Since there would be massive alcohol consumption, Cloud decided that starchy, carb-laden peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would be wise. But there was a heated debate concerning the sensitive nature of the peanut butter to jelly ratio. Sephiroth barely covered his bread with peanut butter, and liked so much strawberry jelly that it oozed from the sides with every bite. Meanwhile, Cloud's bread nearly broke with the weight of four huge spoonfuls of peanut butter, a generous river of honey, a terrain of brown sugar and a very tiny scraping of jelly. When he found a half eaten bag of salty potato chips on Sephiroth's counter, he threw in a handful of those for good measure.

"What the fuck is that?" Sephiroth asked, watching with morbid curiosity as Cloud began to eat the crunchy, sugary creation.

"It's me gaining weight. I'll be fat as fuck soon. Besides, you always tell me not to knock something until I try it."

"I do say that," Sephiroth admitted, then sampled a bite. While he still liked a lot of jelly, he couldn't help but admit that Cloud was on to something.

Trying each other's food led to feeding each other, then to sucking fingers and stealing kisses. Cloud couldn't resist enjoying his lover's physicality in these small ways. And thankfully before any of those stolen kisses became too deep, there came a booming knock on the door.

"Zack!" Cloud cried giddily and slid away from Sephiroth to open the front door. He straightened out his costume and tucked back the obvious erection in his pants before posing and pulling the door open. "Happy Halloween!"

Zack Fair stood before him in a tight, mismatched heavy metal-inspired ensemble complete with a Rock Band guitar around his neck. His hair was teased to even greater heights, and the look was complete with pink lipstick and plenty of gawdy accessories. He was the perfect hair band caricature.

Zack's face fell when he saw Cloud's costume, though. "You look cool!"

"You look cooler!" Cloud argued, closing the door behind him.

"Zack never looks cool," Sephiroth commented from the kitchen.

Zack growled in frustration when he walked further into the apartment and found Sephiroth. "You guys both look cool! Now my costume looks even more stupid than it normally would have in comparison!"

"Poor you," Sephiroth said, and came forward to give Zack a bro grab with a pat on the back combo. "How you been?"

"I'm alright," Zack said uneasily.

"Where's Aerith? Shouldn't she be your slutty groupie?" Cloud asked.

"She's not a part of my life anymore."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes. "Yeah right."

Zack's friendly face hardened in distaste. "Trust me, we broke up for real this time."

Cloud approached him with an empathetic, yet comedic hug. "Aww, I'm sorry. What'd you do this time?"

Zack slid out of the embrace. "I didn't do anything."

Sephiroth leaned against the counter with crossed arms. "Cloud, steal his cell phone. Call the bitch and fix it so he has fun tonight."

Zack put his hand on Cloud's forehead to keep him at bay. "You know what, guys? I wasn t going to get into this, but I see that I have no choice. So to make a very, very long story short: Aerith had an abortion without asking me. She moved out and I can't legally get within a thousand feet of her."

Sephiroth's face twisted in confusion. "Run that by me again."

Cloud nodded with his mouth hanging open. "Yes... details please."

"Listen up, because I've already talked this thing to death I'm not telling this story ever again," After several false starts and a deep breath, Zack spat it out, "We made a baby. Cloud, that happens when a man puts his penis in a woman's - "

"I know that!" Cloud growled. "Stop trying to be funny and tell us what happened."

"It was an accident. I still can't figure out how, because we were careful. It just... happened," Zack took his miniature guitar off and set it on the counter. "... so she told me I was gonna be a dad, and I was a little surprised at first but then I got really pumped. I couldn't even work that day, I called my mom and dad, it was their first grandkid. I told Angeal. I told everybody. I didn't tell you, Seph, because you were out of town all last month and I wanted to say the news to you in person. I thought you'd make a funny face... I think you would have been really excited for us, though. You too, Cloud..."

There was a long stretch of silence until Zack spoke softly. "So for about 24 hours I was going to be a dad. Then the next night, she came home said she'd been doing some thinking and she changed her mind. It was over, the thing had already been done. She said it was her choice. I agree that it was... but..."

"Why?" Cloud blurted. "Why would she do that?"

Zack let out a long suffering sigh and looked up at the ceiling. "She said she still wanted to be with me, but had a different plan for our life; she wanted to be married, she wanted to have a real flower store, she wanted a house and a car and not to live in Midgar when she finally settled down to make a family. She said we're too young, that I was too unpredictable and that our apartment wasn't right for a baby. She even thought I would be relieved to be "off the hook"."

"What'd you say?" Cloud cawed.

"... Nothing. I didn't know what to say, what to feel... I couldn't feel anything, I was numb for days. When I finally could feel something, it was this crazy rage and it came all at once in the middle of the night. I woke her up and told her to get the fuck out of my apartment before I killed her in her sleep. Then she got a restraining order the next morning, and her stuff was out the next night. I've been staying with Angeal... I'm having nightmares about weird, angry dead babies and not being able to save my own kid."

"... I want to kill her. I hate her," Sephiroth said very gently, and the mismatched tone made the angry burning of his eyes somewhat terrifying. "I always hated her."

"I know you did, Seph," Zack was serious and frank, and spilled his guts. "But... I loved her, I wasn't going to abandon her with a kid, and that I was planning on being a really good dad. I couldn't see the future to stop it, but now I can see the past, and I see her walking into that fucking clinic over and over, and I can't do anything to change it. All I can feel is that awful realization... that my kid was erased. Part of me thinks she was lying about the entire thing just to see what'd I say. It's the only way I can stay sane; thinking there was no kid in the first place and she's just an emotional terrorist!"

Both Cloud and Sephiroth's mouths were hanging open at that point.

"So I've been a real drag lately. I need help out of this," Zack wiped a stray tear off his cheek. "I couldn't think of a better Halloween costume this year."

There was silence in the kitchen again, until Cloud cleared is throat. "It's an awesome costume. Everyone's gonna love it. You look like Tommy Lee on even more cocaine."

Zack laughed, and the movement caused more tears to run down his face. He wiped them away quickly, "Good. That's what I was going for... is my makeup a mess?"

Cloud shook his head. "No, it must be waterproof. I actually like the way you did your eyes. Will you do my makeup, too?"

"Sure," Zack smiled, reaching into his back pocket for a cheap little makeup palette bought at a costume shop.

"You wanna do a few shots before we leave, Zack?" Sephiroth asked, going into his cabinets. "Cloud taught me how to make ones that taste like Gummi Bears."

Zack shed his pain like an unseasonable sweater that he would put on again when it got colder. All the angry words Sephiroth and Cloud wanted to say but didn't hung in the air to dissolve. Instead they sat on Sephiroth's couch talking about trivial things while tossing back shots. With clumsy, inexperienced hands, Zack gave Cloud smoky eyes to set off his seductive costume. Sephiroth tried to decline the offer for makeup, but submitted when Cloud insisted they all match.

Two Tron computer programs and a stray hair metal band member left the apartment complex for the train station.

It was Halloween, and that meant becoming someone else.

"Come forward."

Zack, Sephiroth and Cloud all looked blankly at the robed SOLDIER guarding the entrance of the bar. Cloud snickered, "Do we really have to go through this again?"

The figure guarding the door boomed at them, "This is the inner sanctum of SOLDIER. You are about to bear witness to our most ancient of secrets."

"Yeah, we really have to go through this again," Sephiroth answered. Then nodded to the hooded SOLDIER. "Hi, Jason."

"Silence! The solemn acts you witness must be taken with you to the Lifestream. You must also abide by our game on this eve, as is tradition since the dawn of SOLDIER! If you do not agree, I shall cast ye away, most respected anointed ones! And the lowly token Cadet!"

"Lowly token Cadet?" Cloud roared.

"You totally are," Zack informed him. "We hang with you because you make us look taller."

"I'm getting a little sick of all these height references! I'm officially tall enough to be a SOLDIER, I think that means - "

"Silence, oh dwarven one! Allow the Most Honorable General to speak! How do you go, Sir?" The robed SOLDIER pleaded, shaking his fist in reverent passion.

"We agree to whatever," Sephiroth smirked. "... And let it be known that the short Cadet has a really long dick."

"Seeeph!" Cloud cried, but clearly wasn't offended.

"That's an overshare! But you may enter!" The SOLDIER said, and stepped aside to usher them inside.

Zack and Cloud slid past, but Sephiroth hung back. "Go on in without me."

"What? Why?" Cloud asked, his eyebrows scrunching in confusion.

"I'm gonna wait for someone," Sephiroth said simply, checking his phone. "Go on in, they'll be here in like a minute."

"Who?"

Sephiroth blinked his eyes calmly. "Genesis. He asked me to wait for him."

There was something... so completely odd about that blink. It was so slow, so deliberate... so deceptive. Cloud squinted at Sephiroth, staring him directly in his sexpot, feline eyes. "... You're waiting for Genesis?"

There was another suspicious blink. "Yeah."

"... You're lying to me!"

"What?"

"I can tell by the weird thing you're doing with your eyes!"

Another blink. "Why are you bein' a psycho? Just go inside."

"You did it again!"

Zack tugged on Cloud's arm. "C'mon, let him be weird if he wants. I need a drink."

"I wanna know who he's waiting for!" Cloud declared, becoming an unmovable mountain by planting his feet hip's width apart and crossing his arms.

Sephiroth received a text message. He smiled, and peered down the sidewalk. "I'm waitin' for her."

Apparently, Sephiroth had wanted to wait for Marilyn Monroe. With a white halter dress, heels and a tousled head of blonde head of hair, a beautiful lady was walking towards them. Cloud squinted, wondering why this sexy, stunning female looked so familiar... when it struck him like a bolt of lightning. "... Mom?"

"Hey sweetie!" April called, her heels clicking against the sidewalk. "You kids look adorable!"

"You look beautiful and fabulous!" Cloud laughed in wonder at his mother's glamor. Even her tattoos couldn't detract from her old school Hollywood class. "What are you doing here?"

"I invited her," Sephiroth smiled, reaching out to touch one of her soft curls.

"He helped with the apartment last week," April explained, batting Sephiroth's hand away.

"Wait a minute!" Cloud interrupted. "You two like, hung out? By choice?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "You know I've been in Junon for the last two weeks. It'da been rude not to have stopped by and said hello."

"He invited himself in and brought a bag full of binders of swatches for the kitchen. He was too pathetic to turn away," April said, lighting a cigarette.

"... I thought she might need some help turning her new residence into a home..." Sephiroth spoke quietly and from the corner of his mouth. He didn't want to give Zack too much bait to tease him, but had absolutely no control over his passion for interior decorating. "You're not still unsure about the mauve stone washed counter tops, are you? There's still time to cancel the order."

"I'm used to the idea, now. I even picked up the citrus honey tea towel set you suggested, I think it'll look really cute. Colorful, but cute."

"Don't be afraid of color," Sephiroth nearly whispered, glancing around to avoid anyone's eyes.

"You two are assholes!" Cloud wailed in delight. "Mom, we talked a couple days ago! Why didn't you tell me you were coming tonight?"

April shrugged. "I wanted to wait to make sure I didn't have anything better to do."

"Pardon me," Zack cut in, leaning in close and absent-mindedly patting his hair down. "I make it my business to know all the enchanting women around here, and I don't believe we've met..."

Cloud put himself between Zack and his mother. "As far as you're concerned, she's a saint."

"Don't be a cock block, Clow," She murmured breezily as she pushed her son into Sephiroth and out of her way. "My name's April."

"Zack Fair," he introduced himself with a small kiss to her hand. "You must be Cloud's older sister."

"You're a little young to be using a line like that."

"Nineteen in two weeks," Zack answered without being asked.

April laughed, blowing her smoke in his face. "I have underwear older than you are, kid."

Zack breathed the smoke in without skipping a beat. "Maybe you could show them to me?"

She smirked. "... C'mon. Buy me a drink if you're legal."

"Sure! What does this tattoo say?" Zack asked, finding an excuse to run a hand over her bare back.

Cloud groaned as he reluctantly followed his innocent mother and horny, rebounding friend inside, "Seph, do something. Please don't let this happen."

"Baby, don't be a cock block."

The party inside was already well underway, and everyone had shown up in creative, funny, or slutty costumes. There were a million flavors of short-skirted whores, plenty of SOLDIERs willing to display their perfect bodies in skimpy outfits, and more gothic vampire sluts than you could shake a stick at. There were some extremely time consuming home made costumes, the most memorable being a chocobo that was getting fucked by a farmer.

Cloud was delighted to see that he and Sephiroth were the only ones that were wearing Tron inspired costumes. It wasn't exactly a pinnacle moment in pop culture, but their asses looked damn good when accented with neon lights. The bonus was being able to see Sephiroth extremely well in the dimly lit bar.

April and Zack disappeared. Cloud knew that his mother could work a room, and with Zack following her around it would only be that much easier. Even though it was disgusting, it was sort of nice that Zack had found someone to latch onto... although they'd all mostly recovered from the shocking breakup tale, Cloud didn't want their friend to feel like a third wheel all night long.

And the fact was, it was their one-year anniversary. Cloud didn't plan to take his hands off of Sephiroth.

Besides, there was no way his mom would do anything with Zack. No fucking way. She was just pandering to him... yeah, that was it.

They found seats at the bar and ordered. Cloud scooted his stool close to Sephiroth, leaning against him as people began to approach the General to talk. He didn't mind feeling lost in the conversation... Sephiroth's fingers were working sensually at the base of his neck the entire time he spoke. Cloud felt like a content pet, and when his drink arrived it made the moment that much more glorious.

The moment was ruined when a body pressed in close to Cloud's.

He lifted his head and found Rufus Shin-Ra staring at him. He was dressed as Draco Malfoy, "You stupid, stupid bitch."

"Excuse me?" Cloud asked indignantly.

"I just ran in to Zack and his date. Do you realize how long I have been waiting for Zack Fair to drop that plain Jane commoner he's been breeding? He's the only reason I came to this party!" Rufus scowled. "And now that he's single, you hook him up with your sea hag mother at the first social opportunity? Who does that?"

"I didn't do anything!"

"Who does that?" Rufus repeated.

Cloud laughed, "It's Sephiroth's fault! I wouldn't have invited her!"

"I don't care. I hate you," Rufus calmly sipping his martini. "This means war."

"War?"

"Yes, war! The moment you and Sephiroth break up, I'm going to introduce him to my slutty mother. How old is yours anyways? Twenty?"

"Thirty-two," Cloud grinned, thoroughly unoffended by Rufus' assessment of his mother. He'd heard far worse from the locals growing up.

"Well, your mother might be well preserved, but my mom has medical science on her side. She's pushing fifty but I'm pretty sure she can pick up satellite radio with her clit."

Cloud giggled behind his hand, "What did you want with Zack, anyways?"

Rufus threw up a hand. "Are you dense? He's in prime rebound territory. Now it's to be wasted on some random, loose bimbo! I'm completely unprepared for this!"

"It's not like you would have gotten him!" Cloud laughed, touching Sephiroth's arm in thanks when he set another drink down in front of him. "Zack's straight, ya know."

"Do you know how many straight men I've been seven inches deep into?" Rufus said with a flat, leveled stare. "You dropped the ball on this one, Strife. You and the Snow Queen over there should have been first in line to the buffet. I'm so bitterly disappointed in the both of you."

"Zack is like a brother to me," Cloud smiled, taking a long drink.

"Ever the more reason to steal his candy. Brothers are hot," Rufus said with raised eyebrows, staring across the bar at him and April. He was chatting away, double fisting drinks while April ignored him.

Cloud laughed into his drink. "You obviously don't have a brother, then."

"I certainly do."

"Really?"

"Half brother," Rufus amended. "You'll be working under him someday. He's married, and he fucks like an angry pit bull."

Cloud slammed his drink down. "You are a fucking liar! You did not sleep with your own brother!"

"Half brother."

"That is so gross!"

"Some would say homosexuality is gross, it all depends on perspective. And if two consenting male adults decide to swallow a pharmacy s worth of Oxycontin and then have passionate sex until they piss blood, who are you to say that that is wrong?" Rufus lifted a slim, dainty cigarette to his mouth and lit it. "And no, I'm not that hard up. That revolting encounter is one of the reasons I decided to quit. And it's also the reason why poor Lazard decided to do even more drugs, but he'll get over it someday."

Cloud shook his head in amazement. He let his eyes drift to Zack, where he was still attempting to engage his mother in conversation. She was instead speaking to what appeared to be the secretarial pool from the Shin-Ra HQ building. Zack did look awfully... needy. "... Do you really think you would have slept with Zack tonight?"

"I certainly would have tried," Rufus sighed. "You wouldn't believe what I'm wearing underneath this stupid costume."

Cloud looked over at him to appreciate his ultra legit wizard robes. He then froze as he watched a drop of blood was slowly coming from Rufus' nose. It sent a chill up Cloud's spine. "... Hey Ru. You've got a little..."

Instinctively, Rufus took out a tissue and dabbed the blood away. "Don't think less of me. Alcohol thins my blood, and all those years of snorting bleach gives me frequent bleeds."

"Understood," Cloud nodded, not making a big deal of it. He didn't have a vast amount of experience in dealing with ex-junkies, but Rufus seemed relatively sober. Perhaps a bit wobbly on his feet, but that was obviously due to the bottomless martini in his hand. "So how long have you been without drugs?"

"Cloud, I have been drug free for nearly fourteen months. I could have had a baby in that time," Rufus said, sipping his drink. "And as an older, wiser person I advise you to stick strictly to ecstasy, hydra and mushrooms. Leave the hard stuff alone!"

"I can't do drugs. Army, remember?" Cloud grinned sheepishly.

"Since when did that stop anyone? If you ever need a urine sample just ask me," Rufus nodded. "I like giving back to the community. What else is sobriety good for?"

Cloud swallowed the rest of his drink before sliding off of his stool. "Come dance with me."

Rufus put his nose in the air. "I don't want to dance with you."

"Pretend I'm your brother."

With a playful tug of his wizard robes, Cloud lured Rufus onto the relatively empty dance floor. They were able to dance to a couple of songs before Max got on the microphone, raving about the traditional Halloween party and the open bar policy being written off as a business expense. Cloud supposed that working for a multi-trillion gil company, the hard working employees felt the need to every so often screw their boss. It was one night a year that they could rock on Mr. Shin-Ra's dime without having to impress investors or otherwise be expected to behave in a professional manner.

Cloud sat excitedly on his stool beside Sephiroth, both hoping and dreading that his name might be called to come sing. Rufus sat between Cloud and Genesis - who was proudly dressed as a slutty version of Harry Potter. Zack and his mother had migrated closer, and Angeal was seated on the other side of Sephiroth in a very revealing 300 Spartan outfit... Cloud kept seeing his abs ripple from the corner of his eyes. Since when was an older guy allowed to be so sexy?

Most of the people to get called up to sing were people Cloud didn't recognize. There were leagues of SOLDIERs, Turks, and army, and they all had their own social circles. While the size of the group was sometimes alienating, Sephiroth was able to fill Cloud in on any inside jokes that were made. And like the year before, every song containing a key word to drink on which kept Cloud steaming towards intoxication. He was beginning to feel no pain until someone closer to home was called to the stage.

"Zack Fair, off your lazy ass!" Max barked. Zack blossomed under the spotlight, always pleased to be the center of attention. He chose his song from the fishbowl, and wound up with Madonna's 'Like a Prayer'. It was obvious before the first note of the song that Zack was not able to carry a tune in a bucket, but it was also very obvious that he was going to try. What followed was the most hilarious three minutes of everyone's life. Rufus resembled the Joker when he was laughing uncontrollably, and that only sparked Cloud to laugh even harder, and the sound of it made Sephiroth crack up, and it was a chain effect throughout the entire place.

Zack soaked it in, happy to make others happy. He was a bonafied energy vampire.

One of Cloud's Weapon's instructors was called up to sing a Beastie Boys rap, and Cloud was pretty impressed with his flow. A very sexy lady was called up to sing, and she decided halfway through the song that she'd rather strip. Cloud had never actually seen a naked woman in person before, and found himself looking away with a severe blush. Sephiroth noticed and teased him with a tickling hand on his side, only adding to the embarrassment.

Angeal was called up to sing, which gave Cloud an excuse to stare at his body. When he was forced to stumble his was through a Ke$ha tune, it only added to his humble appeal and put his charming, handsome smile in permanent display for two whole minutes. Cloud couldn't help but notice that Angeal was always on his own at parties without a date, which made him wonder what his sexual orientation was.

Cloud leaned over to whisper in Rufus' ear. "Is Angeal gay?"

To which Rufus gave his normal reply, "Everyone is a little gay."

His tongue loosened by alcohol, Cloud slurred a bit. "Isn't he hot?"

Rufus assessed him for a moment. "Yeah... He kind of is."

Everyone in the room was jolly, soused and electrified by hyperactive, good time partying vibes. Max was ready to give up the microphone and have a drink, "And so that concludes our game of the evening. Please continue to enjoy the open bar - you're going to need it for what's about to happen next. The beautiful, luscious General Sephiroth has requested your attention, and you know what happens if you don't give it to him - "

Sephiroth swiftly moved up off of his stool without saying a word, leaving Cloud to watch him with utmost confusion. The room divided into barking drink orders, cheers for Sephiroth, and loud conversations. But when Sephiroth took the stage, standing there like a God in the glowing spotlight his skintight lightsuit, fierce feline eyes and streaming silver hair... the room gradually quieted and the joyous atmosphere turned expectant.

"I have something to get off my chest," Sephiroth declared, and the room suddenly became silent. He waited a moment to let that sink in as he collected his thoughts. "At last year's Cadet orientation, Cloud Strife asked me what kind of music I listen to. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had just met someone who was going to change my whole life for the better."

Cloud cupped both hands over his mouth to stifle an emotional explosion. He glanced around, and was glad that nobody was looking at him and all eyes were on the General. There was blood rushing in his ears, but he struggled to listen to every word Sephiroth was saying: "As a lot of you know from being with me in the field, I'm a big believer in stupid questions deserving stupid answers. So I burned him a CD with some song I liked on it. I thought that would be the end, but I soon found out that Cloud Strife is one of the most relentless, annoying, persistent people on the face of this planet; if a door closes on him, he'll get a screwdriver and take it right off the hinges. But he didn't want me to train him, he wasn't really interested in money, and he understood that I have a stupid, crazy schedule... but he just wanted to be around me for some reason. Our first date was exactly one year ago, to this Halloween party. I don't know what I did before I had him in my life. He's the best friend I've ever had."

You could hear a pin drop in the bar. Sephiroth rubbed his slightly pink face, very obviously embarrassed. "... Cloud's my best friend and he's my boyfriend. How lucky am I that I found one person who could be both of those things? We still make each other CDs every now and then. I made him a new CD for our one-year anniversary. He hasn't listened to it yet, but I wanna sing the first song on it to him. And I want him to know that... I forgot most of this fuckin' speech. But I'm very willing to humiliate myself to make him happy. So he better be fuckin' happy for a real long time."

Cloud finally released the air he'd been holding on a gust of laughter. There was a tiny smattering of applause in the room, because any onlooker could see how difficult it had been for Sephiroth to get through that. Death, war, money, greed, and power were easy things to speak in public about. Professing admiration for someone you loved in front of your friends and colleagues was not.

But who doesn't enjoy a good, sappy tale? Cloud could see couples cuddle closer, and misty-eyed single women touch their hearts in desire, and single men puff out like peacocks in hopes of being the hero in their own 'how we met' story. Cloud shut his eyes and felt like he was having an out of body experience; pieces of what Sephiroth had said were already flying through his mind, and he thought for sure if he looked at his beloved that he'd lose his composure and become a sobbing mess.

But then a few notes of a horrible song began to play, and Cloud's eyes widened so large that the tears fell right out of them.

In his low, monotonous, rumbling voice, Sephiroth quietly sang, "You think I'm pretty without any makeup on... You think I'm funny when I tell the punchline wrong... I know you get me, so I let my walls come down..."

Sephiroth was singing a Katy Perry song. 'Teenage Dream' by Katy mother-fucking Perry. What the fuck was Sephiroth doing? Cloud covered his eyes and screamed at the top of his lungs, much to the delight of everyone around him.

The lyrics skipped a little bit as Sephiroth laughed, but he did his best to continue to sing, "Let's go all the way tonight, no regrets... just love. We can dance until we die, you and I will be young forever. You make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream."

Cloud screeched in joy, delight, horror, and humiliation and it left him bouncing in his seat from sheer emotion. He was thoroughly embarrassed, completely enamored, and utterly shocked that Sephiroth would do such a stupid thing in the name of love.

The longer the song went on, the harder it was for Cloud to maintain any semblance of composure. Every single word was sang with honesty, and even though Sephiroth was completely red in the face, he remained convicted. He was a warrior and not a pop star, and so he didn't put on any sort of show. He just stood there, smiling at Cloud and singing to him with his weight swaying slightly to the beat.

Sephiroth had never looked more vulnerable, or more sexy. Cloud honestly thought he might drop dead from the things his heart was doing in his chest.

As if Katy Perry designed the song around what it would one day to do Cloud's body, Sephiroth broke it down; "I'ma get your heart racing in my skin tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight. Let you put your hands on me in my skin tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight."

Finally, Cloud leapt from his seat. He bumped and tripped his way to the stage and leaned on it, reaching up to hug Sephiroth's knees. He continued to sing but crouched down low, letting Cloud's hands run up his legs, to his arms, and then cup his face.

The melody that was moving Sephiroth's voice faded until he was merely speaking the words. The speaking stopped when Cloud went up on his tiptoes and greedily kissed his face. Nobody needed to hear the rest of the song, anyways.

Embarrassment had reduced both of them to their common denominator - their love for each other. Cloud felt himself pulled up into Sephiroth's arms, and somehow forgot that they were the focus of a room full of people who were mostly strangers that he would one day need to work with professionally. He was being held by a man who loved him so much that he'd belt out a pop tune to express it on their anniversary. If it offended anyone that he needed to kiss him right that moment - they could go fuck themselves.

From Sephiroth's perspective he was spared finishing the song. He'd easily allow Cloud to busy his mouth with something besides singing. In a way, it felt like a daring rescue and Sephiroth melted into his savior's embrace accordingly.

The public kiss only lasted a few seconds. Then the music was halted, and the group had their moment of applause, cheers and jeers. They were drunk, happy and entertained - they wanted for nothing. Sephiroth gratefully handed the mic back to Max with a wide grin, and the man shook his head. "Thankfully, Sephiroth and Cloud have managed to segway right into the drunken make out portion of the evening quite nicely."

The joke smoothed over the moment, and Sephiroth led Cloud back to their seats amidst good-natured ribbing from their fellow partygoers. The general consensus was 'Aww, how cute!', 'Oh my God, you're so sexy!', 'I got pictures!', 'You can't sing!' or any combination thereof.

Sephiroth wasn't nearly drunk enough for that, and his hands were shaking slightly. "I need a drink."

"I need you," Cloud whispered, squeezing both arms around his narrow waist and buckling him into a hug that would not end any time soon.

Sephiroth dropped his neck down and let his cheek rest on top of Cloud's head. Their embrace slowly tightened until it nearly hurt. It was only loosened when Cloud shuddered a bit with the need to draw breath, but still Sephiroth kept him as close as possible.

A tap on his shoulder brought Sephiroth's cheek up from Cloud's hair, and a bartender was looking at him expectantly. Sephiroth shook his head helplessly. "Just bring me a bottle of Jack, please."

Once the bartender left, Cloud looked up. "... You sang to me."

"I thought it'd make you laugh."

Cloud grinned, and wiped at his makeup streaked face. "... I can't top that, Sephiroth."

"Sure you can."

Around two in the morning, Cloud went for another drink and Sephiroth stopped him.

"No more tonight. Okay?"

Cloud knew Sephiroth wouldn't want to make love to a giggling, vomiting mess and smiled in understanding. So he coasted on his gentle buzz through dancing, drama, and a long, happy conversation with his mother. She was amused by what a fool her son made of himself on a dance floor. Cloud knew he couldn't fucking dance, but when one is dancing with the sexiest General in the world, it hardly mattered.

Rufus and Genesis had their nightly argument. Angeal was the one who broke it up, and then the three of them precariously left together... Cloud had to feel a little jealous that Rufus and Genesis were probably going to devour his mild crush. He made a mental note to try and weasel Rufus' phone number out of Sephiroth, so he could text him the next day and try to get some details.

Zack hung around April all night like a mosquito, while she made fast friends with the secretaries and teachers who enjoyed a touch of her bawdy humor. A few lesbians flocked around Sephiroth for a short while, which made dancing interesting. Cloud had more female groin against his ass than male, and he didn't quite know what to make of it.

The bar was becoming emptier, and Cloud's body was getting fatigued, which was completely unacceptable. He'd had a full day of training, plus an entire night of silly dancing, and his muscles were beginning to complain. He needed to save the rest of his energy to consummate their anniversary, and tugged on Sephiroth's fingers. "Are you ready?"

Sephiroth checked the clock and seemed surprised that it was nearly four. "Oh yeah, let's get the fuck out of here."

Cloud went by his mother to wish her farewell. April hugged him close. "You have a good weekend with Sephiroth."

"I will!" He beamed, before leaning back suspiciously. "Where are you going after this? You're not going to try driving back to Junon tonight, are you?"

"I won't drive tonight," April said with a grin.

Cloud's eyes flicked to Zack, who was playing cards with a group of his younger SOLDIER friends. "... Are you?"

"Am I what?" April seemed content in being mysterious, which led Cloud to believe that she didn't actually know what she was going to do. And even though Cloud was well aware that she could take care of herself, he wrote down Sephiroth's address for her just in case. He prayed to God she wouldn't show up that night, but the option was there.

And with that, they left. The night air was chilly compared to the heat of the bar, and Cloud tucked himself close to Sephiroth. The sidewalk wobbled a little bit beneath his feet, but other than that Cloud remained of sound mind.

The train ride back to the loft was spent with Cloud dozing on Sephiroth's shoulder. The silence wasn't because there weren't an infinite number of things to discuss, but because they didn't need to speak to communicate. After a year spent mostly talking to one another on the phone and creating an ocean of conversation to dive into, physical communication felt much more gratifying than words. With their hands held tightly, Cloud relaxed and fell asleep against the wall of warmth that made up his beloved.

The next thing he knew, Sephiroth was gently scooping him up off the seat. He actually allowed himself to be carried off of the train, completely boneless and trusting in Sephiroth's arms.

"This feels awesome," Cloud whispered. He'd been carried short distances, but never in public and never completely, weightlessly suspended like a giant toddler. It was the most comforting feeling in the world, and he almost wanted Sephiroth to carry him around the block a few times to make it last. "Thank you."

"You're so heavy like this."

"Whoops," Cloud mumbled, but didn't move.

Sephiroth murmured to him, "You're alright, baby. Just sleep."

Right on. But then Cloud's eyes shot open when he realized who he was, where he was, who he was being carried by, and where they were going. They were going to bed, but definitely not to sleep!

"I'm awake!" Cloud snorted, coming alive and dropping to the ground. He spun in circles on the sidewalk, he jumped, skipped and jogged to energize himself. "It's five in the morning but I'm totally awake!"

"We're awake, holy shit," Sephiroth chuckled, rather tired himself. He skipped a few beats alongside Cloud before he began to drag his feet again.

Cloud was breathless and happy when they entered Sephiroth's apartment, and the craving was there. Sephiroth obviously felt the same way, because he took Cloud's hand and led him to the bedroom, but could barely make it past the threshold without stopping for kisses. His mouth was deliciously soft, wet and open, and the shapes Cloud's lips made felt incredible against his.

Desire woke them both up, and Cloud felt a rush of energy as his lover's fingers pulled at the edge of his pants. Sephiroth's hands were everywhere as they were pushed down Cloud's thighs, and he quickly stumbled out of them. Sephiroth then yanked Cloud's shirt up to his collarbone, and he bowed his head to kiss across his bare chest.

Cloud never felt sexier than when Sephiroth was pawing at him. In his haste to get rid of barriers between their skin, Sephiroth seemed to have forgotten about his plan to cut a fuck hole in the ass of Cloud's costume. It was somewhat of a relief... Cloud didn't think he could handle any nonsense at that point. Games could be played tomorrow, for hours if Sephiroth wanted, but right then? All Cloud wanted was to be one with this man, as Harlequin Romance as that sounded.

But actually hearing those corny verses bounce around inside his head was part of being in love. The more pathetic and desperate it became, the better it felt when Sephiroth's lips touched his and took it away.

Cloud's fingers wormed into Sephiroth's shirt and began to peel the costume off of his body. The juxtaposed feeling of soft skin stretched over hard muscle was addicting, and Cloud's hands ran over as much of it as they could reach. Sephiroth leaned against Cloud, allowing them both to indulge in the feelings of touching and being touched.

Cloud tucked his fingers into Sephiroth's underwear, and ripped his lips away so he could watch. He pushed them down slowly, savoring every inch of skin that was exposed. He then smiled when Sephiroth's cock bounced slightly as it was freed.

"You act like you never saw that before," Sephiroth said, and bent slightly to finish rolling the pants down his legs.

Cloud didn't comment, but the visual evidence of the effect his kisses and his touch had over the General's body was still unbelievable, and he'd never get tired of it. Sephiroth finished removing his clothes and then straightened up, pulling Cloud in close for more of those delicious kisses.

All eight of Cloud's fingertips danced from Sephiroth's balls to the tip of his cock, and the General didn't make a sound. But his breath stopped altogether when Cloud squeezed, pulling at it with a slow twist of his palm. When Sephiroth remembered to breathe, it came as a low growl that seeped into Cloud's mouth.

The vibration sent a chill through Cloud's body, and he sucked his lips away to look up at Sephiroth. "I think I'd be happy if I could stand right here and kiss you forever."

Sephiroth yanked Cloud closer for more. Their fingers and palms moved over each other's bodies, soaking in sensation and information, mapping out and memorizing each other. Cloud began to sway slightly, his cock rubbing between Sephiroth's thighs. Cloud pulled away to kiss Sephiroth's chest at eye level, and then raked his teeth gentle over one nipple. He bent his knees a little and stretched his tongue out to let it dance over Sephiroth's rib tattoo.

Sephiroth's hands took Cloud's face, and lifted it up to kiss him hungrily. Cloud took slow steps backward, leading Sephiroth to bed with his lips until the backs of his knees hit the mattress. He only stopped kissing to sit down and scoot backwards, making room for Sephiroth to crawl between his legs. He overtook Cloud and pressed open lips against his, feverish to resume making love to his mouth.

Their tongues mirrored the movements of their bodies, with Sephiroth pushing down and Cloud pushing back. It was only until Sephiroth's hands moved to finish pulling his shirt over his head that Cloud realized he was still wearing it. He opened his eyes and helped remove the last article of clothing, then hugged Sephiroth close. Their chests pressed together, and Cloud shivered at the feeling of Sephiroth's nipples, musculature, and groin pressed flat against his own.

"... Wanna fuck you," Sephiroth said between kisses, letting gravity weigh him down on top of Cloud's body. Their cocks bumped and slid against one another, seeming to be embracing after a brief time apart. Even Sephiroth's balls nuzzled against Cloud's, the one soft little spot on the hard terrain of his body.

"Do it," Cloud nearly moaned as his hands folded into Sephiroth's endless hair. When lying down it seemed to go on forever, and there was enough to drown in. He was loathe to talk, but felt like rushing the teasing preparation ritual. "I loosened up this morning in the shower."

"Awesome," He murmured, tilting his head into the caress of Cloud's fingers. He kissed him once before pulling away and digging around in his drawer. It put his belly button inches from Cloud's face, and he couldn't resist sticking his tongue into the little dip in the center of Sephiroth's stomach.

He jerked slightly at the ticklish touch, but huffed when there was no lube to be found in the drawer. He came back to kiss Cloud once before hanging off the side of the bed with his perfect ass in the air, digging around underneath while muttering to himself. Cloud giggled when Sephiroth came back, looking victorious with a tube of lubricant in his hand. "Why was it under your bed?"

"None of your business," Sephiroth announced, and with a sudden hastiness, he took one of Cloud's calves and moved it up to rest on his shoulder. He put some lubrication on his fingers and attempted to press his finger in. He was met with the usual amount of resistance. "... You're tight."

"I tried," Cloud shrugged, chuckling breathlessly as Sephiroth's middle finger pushed inside him. "I got three in this morning."

"That explains it. Three of your fingers is like one of mine," Sephiroth grinned, doing his deep imitation of a giggle as Cloud's foot knocked the side of his head. "... Pretty sexy... you fuckin' yourself in the shower."

Cloud's breath shuddered when Sephiroth pushed in a second finger. Cloud reached down to touch Sephiroth's hand, and felt that he was using his two middle fingers. They slowed a bit, and Sephiroth stared down as Cloud his own middle finger along with them.

"You're fuckin' nasty," Sephiroth said, licking his lips wolfishly as Cloud moved his smaller finger quickly against his own.

"You like it?"

"God yes," Sephiroth exhaled, his fingers nearly shaking as they slid against Cloud's.

Cloud clenched his teeth as Sephiroth hinted at inserted another finger. It glided in gingerly, until Cloud took a breath and relaxed enough to take it all. He slowly removed his own finger and reached for the lubricant. He opened the tube and spread a little on his palms, and curled one around his cock and the other around Sephiroth's. They let out a rush of air together, accompanied by the wet slide of Cloud's hands.

Sephiroth was painfully hard in his palm. Cloud squeezed, feeling the rush of blood beneath the skin, and pulled to bring Sephiroth closer. He slid his fingers out of Cloud's hole and let himself be guided to the tight, pink opening. Cloud eased the head inside, and let go to allow Sephiroth to do the rest of the work.

He rested his weight on his hands, his back arching as Cloud's fingers dug into him. "... Lemme in."

Cloud was trying. But even though he desperately wanted it, relaxing was hard when he was being barged into. Sephiroth's cock felt impossibly thick after a length of time without it, and controlling his inner muscles wasn't always easy when his mind was psyched up and eager. Cloud took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to force his lower body to go slack and let Sephiroth work his way in without too much resistance.

"That's better," Sephiroth said, dropping his head to kiss Cloud as his hips pushed forward slowly. He wanted to ensure that he didn't tear or hurt his lover; there was no bigger killjoy than finding blood on his sheets and wondering if Cloud had suffered without speaking up. It would always be that way, no matter what Cloud's age was or their level of sexual experience together. "... Doin' okay?"

"Yeah," Cloud nodded, his hands sliding up and down Sephiroth's sides in reassurance. "It feels good."

Sephiroth made a small noise of affirmation in his throat, and looked down between their bodies. He adjusted Cloud's hips a bit for easier access and stuffed a pillow beneath his lower back to keep him there comfortably. Cloud smiled up at him at the small gesture, and raised his legs higher to display more of himself.

"Oh, wow..." Sephiroth thought aloud, running his fingers over the muscles pushing up underneath Cloud's thighs, hips and lower stomach. Instead of seeing Cloud's pelvic bones from this angle, he was seeing a layer of sinewy muscle that definitely hadn't been there before. Even his ass was rounder and cuter, and created an adorable bubble-like curve with the help of a little extra flesh.

"What?" Cloud asked, trying to look but unable to see anything unusual. He knew there were small changes to his body, but a lot of small changes over time added up to a much more dramatic one.

Instead of trying to explain it, Sephiroth gave a firm smack to Cloud's upturned ass and was greeted with a very satisfying thwack. It even sounded better. "... Just checkin' out my hot boyfriend while I do him. You got a problem with that?"

"Nope," Cloud grinned, and used what little leverage he had to press himself closer to Sephiroth. After a few more slow moments of adjusting, Cloud fell into the groove of balancing relaxation and sensation, which opened the doorway to pleasure. He let out a quick breath as Sephiroth moved over him, his cock pulling and pushing against slick, delicate skin inside of him.

The friction was nice, only because it extended both the sensations of pain and pleasure and overlapped them. It was a familiar feeling, and one that always heralded even better feelings. Some of that friction was eased as their lubrication was able to spread deeper inside. It led to a lovely chain of events; Sephiroth was granted a much smoother range of motion, and the pain of the act minimized to almost nothing.

A small bit of discomfort was made well worth it by the heady feeling of being completely full, and also by the electrifying feeling of Sephiroth's cock kissing his prostate. Cloud tensed unconsciously whenever it was touched, tightening that small fraction to alert Sephiroth that he was going in the right direction. Cloud began to pop his hips up as much as he could in his position to meet Sephiroth, his shy moaning increasing in intensity as he began to shed any remaining inhibitions.

There wasn't really room for shyness, afterall. They were in love, and in the midst of this physical expression of that feeling they could do no wrong to each other. Cloud lifted his hands to Sephiroth's hair, which moved against his legs like a curtain of tinsel. He twirled his fist through it several times, tightening and pulling until Sephiroth was forced to bend down and kiss him. They smiled against each other's lips until Cloud loosened his hold, and instead buried his fingers in Sephiroth's scalp.

A little distraction with his lips, and Sephiroth was finally able to push himself into Cloud entirely. He nudged his hips against Cloud's ass, loving the sensation of being completely buried inside. He kept himself still for that moment to savor it, when Cloud's body suddenly tightened around him to the very razor's edge of pain.

"Shit!" Sephiroth gasped. Every single inch of his cock was being gripped, and he hissed through his teeth as he tried to pull back but literally couldn't. He could see Cloud's stomach trembling from the force of it, and marveled at how strong his Cadet was becoming.

"I can feel it... like, throbbing," Cloud said, biting his lips through a smile as he rocked his hips, gently nursing Sephiroth's cock inside him while maintaining that supernatural tightness. "... You like it like this?"

Like was an understatement. With the combination of Cloud's ass squeezing his cock and his coy dirty talk, Sephiroth was suddenly afraid that he would shoot off at any moment. "Ease up."

It came out harsher than he meant to, but Cloud's smile widened in understanding. Sephiroth hissed through his teeth as Cloud relaxed enough to allow him to move. As he began to pound against Cloud's body, Sephiroth groaned in a mixture of frustration, passion and complete wonder. Sex kept getting better but Sephiroth didn't understand how. Each time held a new revelation, and at the same time all the old revelations were still as amazing as they were the first time they presented themselves.

"Love you," Sephiroth blurted, his forehead dropping against Cloud's shoulder.

"Love you, too," Cloud gave a breathy moan and reached down with both hands to caress Sephiroth's hips as they moved between his legs. He slid his hands up over Sephiroth's arms and around to his back, feeling the tension already beginning to coil in his lover. Cloud's fingertips flitted up Sephiroth's neck, and up into his hair gripping again as he tried to lift his hips but couldn't quite manage it. "... Seph... let me do some work."

Sephiroth lifted his head to smile at Cloud. "You want up?"

"Yeah," Cloud groaned, his voice dipping down into the dark, sultry tones that only came out in bed. "Get on your back. Feet on the floor."

Sephiroth couldn't resist thrusting his hips a few more times, but then slowed down to gently pull out and obey Cloud's wishes. He batted the pillow that had been supporting Cloud out of the way and rolled onto his back, stretching his legs out over the edge of the bed. Cloud slowly dragged his body over Sephiroth's, making the General tense underneath him.

He sucked Sephiroth's lower lip, catching it between his teeth as he unhurriedly mounted up. Cloud only released it as he sat up on the balls of his feet, rising up high to line up his lover's cock and press it inside. As he inched his way down he seemed to melt a little, easing himself onto his knees and taking it all in until his ass cheeks rested against the tops of Sephiroth's thighs.

"You feel..." Cloud spoke softly through closed eyes. He rested there for a moment, his fingers digging into Sephiroth's chest.

Cloud forgot to finish his sentence, and arched down to kiss Sephiroth instead. He began to move his body, rolling his hips slowly with Sephiroth's cock buried deep inside. He created the friction with tiny movements and practiced muscle control; as he moved he hugged Sephiroth tight with his ass before relaxing. It took a little concentration at first, but then he fell into a rhythm and it became as natural as breathing.

Sephiroth's tongue was languid against Cloud's, and he was barely kissing in favor of lying there like a lost soul entranced by an evil incubus. Cloud let the kiss dissolve before he pushed himself up and sat tall over Sephiroth's hips. He watched the General's eyes move over his body, unable to look away from the smooth roll of his hips. Cloud might have been clumsy, and he might not have been able to dance well... but he knew how to move on top of Sephiroth's cock better than any stripper that ever lived. He liked keeping that secret between them.

He put a little more intensity and intent behind his movements, well aware of his power and sexuality in this position and reveling in it. "... I love making you my bitch."

Sephiroth's eyes flew open at that, and were burning such a fierce green that Cloud was afraid he'd actually offended the man. They continued to burn as Sephiroth's mouth curled into a crooked smile. "Your bitch?"

Cloud smiled back, shrinking in on himself a bit in shyness of what he'd said. "Yeah. You're my bitch. Nobody else's."

"You're right," Sephiroth admitted as he snapped his hips up between Cloud's thighs, effectively ruining his rhythm and causing him to release a squeak of surprise.

Cloud narrowed his eyes and forced his weight down on Sephiroth's body as he rode him harder, and for a brief moment he believed that he had really overpowered the General. He snarled, pressing down on Sephiroth's chest to assert his authority, but was helpless when those strong hips began bucking steadily beneath his. Sephiroth used the leverage of his feet on the floor to bounce Cloud, establishing a new and harder rhythm that left him breathless.

He moaned for Sephiroth, dropping his guards and riding the waves instead of fighting them. It felt too fucking good to fight it, and with the way Sephiroth's stomach muscles worked as he thrust up into him, Cloud wouldn't want him to stop. He dragged his fingers down Sephiroth's chiseled anatomy, and imagined himself in the midst of an endless orgasm, load after load spurting out of his cock and hosing down that hard body beneath him. Maybe Sephiroth would rub it into his chest, wanting to be completely covered in a thin, sticky layer of Cloud's love...

Cloud's thighs tensed, but he didn't touch himself. Not yet. He let his cock strain between his legs, wanting to wait until Sephiroth was clenching his teeth and bursting inside him. This had been the perfect anniversary and he wanted everything to go right, especially this moment. He saw Sephiroth's hands reach for his cock but took them and moved them to his chest, instead. "Seph... You're not done with me, yet."

"No I'm not," Sephiroth licked his lips and took his time feeling every moist inch of Cloud's torso, appreciating every painful day he'd spent training to shape his body this way. He then took Cloud's narrow waist in his hands and followed the fluid wiggle of his hips. A steady, wet sound filled the room to accompany their gasping breaths, a melodious mix of Sephiroth's slick cock pushing up into that tight hole, and Cloud's balls slapping against Sephiroth's lower stomach.

Cloud leaned back slightly to rest his hands on Sephiroth's knees, seeking more leverage to give Sephiroth the best sensation that he could. He looked down the line of his own body, amazed at his own stomach muscles as they tensed and relaxed with every breath he took. He saw Sephiroth looking at him, his hungry eyes sweeping back and forth over his body with a look of pure, carnal admiration. Cloud arched back a little, flexing slightly and giving Sephiroth even more to look at.

"You are fuckin' hot," Sephiroth finally commented, unable to resist coasting his hands over Cloud's stomach and chest.

Cloud arched even more into the touch, and accidentally found a new position. He nearly shouted as Sephiroth's cock rammed straight into his prostate. It wasn't a caress or a kiss, the head was jabbing straight into it. Cloud tried to move away from the oppressive pleasure - but Sephiroth's hands tightened on his waist to hold him steady.

"Stay right there," Sephiroth spoke between gritted teeth, using his feet to bounce against Cloud. "Don't you fuckin' move."

"Seph!" Cloud cried, digging his fingers into his lover's knees as he was forced to endure the incredibly unwelcome stimulation. It was fucking up his entire plan, but his hips began to grind down against Sephiroth's cock, trying to get even more of that terrible, heightened pleasure. His entire face, neck and chest had broken out in a volcanic flush of heat, his thighs were shaking and he completely lost control of his voice. "Fuck me Seph, oh fuck, please, fuck me...!"

Sephiroth watched entranced, unsure of what was going to happen but not willing to let Cloud squirm out of the position. He kept his beat steady and didn't change a note, but could feel his own body begin to tighten towards release. He didn't focus on it, instead concentrated on keeping that brilliant flush on Cloud's gorgeous face.

With a guttural cry, Cloud's hands left Sephiroth's knees as he reached for his own cock, but some sort of instinct made Sephiroth grab both his wrists.

Cloud cried out again and attempted to pull away, but instead laced between Sephiroth's fingers and tightened so hard that their knuckles cracked. "Seph! I'm... coming! Oh fuck, I'm coming! Don't stop! Seph! Seph!"

Sephiroth's name was stretched into a guttural scream, and he watched in complete wonder as Cloud's cock pulsed, releasing milky fluid while bouncing in time his hips. The load was incredibly thick, and shot out in an arch that landed high on Sephiroth's chest. The next spurt reached his ribs, and the rest dribbled out to pool between their bodies like milk.

All this happened while their hands were trapped together.

"Oh my God..." Cloud moaned, crumpling like a paper doll on top of Sephiroth.

It was all way too much. The natural sexiness of his boyfriend, the position, the sight of his long cock bouncing and letting out his load like a geyser... and now this trembling mess of a hyper sensitized adorableness? Sephiroth's fingers gripped into Cloud's ass and gave it a firm slap, making him tense over him with a helpless cry.

"I'm there... you want it?" He growled up and Cloud, digging his fingers in hard as he ran his hands over Cloud's slim thighs. "Tell me you fucking want it."

"Please... Do it for me, please..." He moaned on top of Sephiroth, trembling wildly as he held onto him for dear life. "Seph... I wanna feel it..."

Cloud nearly sobbed when he felt the first wave of Sephiroth's burning hot semen jet inside of him, his cock still stabbing into his most sensitive point. Between the unbelievable experience he'd just had and the wonderful feeling of Sephiroth letting out inside him... it was all so good that it could only be classified as torture. Cloud felt lightheaded, and murmured encouragement as his lover's world shook underneath him.

With a series of heavy groans Sephiroth continued to push up inside, rocking out his entire climax until he felt his own come drip down his cock. He inevitably began to soften, and finally pushed Cloud's hips up until his cock slipped out, and let Cloud fall back down in an exhausted heap of lean, quivering limbs.

Cloud's breath was labored and coming out in warm bursts against his neck. He didn't want to lift his head, speak or try to move out of complete and utter emotional trauma. His brain was wiped blank, and when thoughts finally began to form again, he replayed what had just happened to get him to this point.

He relived his own lasciviousness as he used Sephiroth's cock and came without even being touched. But only before begging to feel Sephiroth come in his ass like some random prostitute. Cloud's vision wavered as his entire body broke out into a blush so fierce he practically had hives.

He'd had an... for lack of a better term, an anal orgasm many times before. But it was always very mild, internal and secret... Sephiroth never knew. But this time the anal orgasm was completely different, so intense that it hurt, and totally against his will. And so utterly pleasurable he didn't even know how to fathom what his body had experienced, it was impossible to categorize it as either pleasure or pain.

So not only did Cloud have to fight with himself to last more than a minute while having sex with the most gorgeous man alive, now he had to worry about holding in his load when he wasn't even touching himself? Cloud didn't know whether he was more shocked, embarrassed, angry or disappointed... he hoped Sephiroth would let it go.

After a few minutes of recovery, they both caught their breath. The sunrise was orange on the horizon, and Sephiroth's fingers then wiggled their way into Cloud's hair to gently rustle it. "... Wow."

Cloud swallowed. "... Hm."

"That was... weird."

"Uh huh."

Sephiroth sensed his reluctance to speak, and figured the kid was tired and probably headed towards sleep. So he calmly smoothed out his damp spikes. "It didn't hurt, did it?"

"... Uh. Not exactly," Cloud tensed, squeezing his eyes closed when he realized that no, Sephiroth and his big mouth were not going to just let this go.

"'Kay," Sephiroth said, trying not to press the subject but unable to contain his amazement. It wasn't everyday that Cloud shot a load like that! It was the ultimate compliment to his cock, and Sephiroth found himself grinning down at it like a prize racing chocobo. "Did you know you could do that?"

"I have to use the toilet," Cloud said bluntly as he disengaged from Sephiroth and stepped off the bed without looking at him.

His satisfied smile dipped into a concerned frown as he watched Cloud close the door behind him. He laid there for a moment, pondering what had happened and if he'd done something wrong. Perhaps that did hurt Cloud, after all? Sephiroth rolled to his feet and approached the door, knocking softly. "... Baby?"

"I'm going number two," Cloud answered.

"I don't care. I need to rinse off," Sephiroth replied. "Can I come in?"

"I guess."

He opened the door and found Cloud on the toilet, looking completely miserable as he stared between his knees.

Sephiroth paused at the doorway. "What'd I do now?"

Cloud looked up. "Huh?"

"What did I do wrong?" Sephiroth asked clearly.

"It's not about you, Seph..." Cloud looked back down as though his own fingers were suddenly fascinating. "You're wonderful."

"Why are you like this?"

Cloud shrugged his shoulders. "I'm just so sick of myself... We can set up the most amazing sex, and I ruin it almost every single time. You weren't even actually touching me and I lost it... Tonight was so perfect, and we've been looking forward to this for so long, and now you're probably disappointed - "

With a booming sigh, Sephiroth literally fell to his knees. Cloud's eyes widened as Sephiroth walked towards him on his knees, his expression that of man during a holy vision of God. When he arrived on the tiles in front of Cloud, he assured him : "You... did not... ruin... anything."

Cloud laughed shyly as Sephiroth kissed him from his knees to his thighs and straight up to his mouth. "Cloud, that was the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life."

"But I - "

Cloud laughed harder as Sephiroth interrupted him and began to rave emphatically and plant rough kisses on his face. "You have never. Nor will you ever. Ruin sex. You are hot. You are perfect. You are awesome. You are amazing. I love sex with you. I love when you come. I wanna do it again - "

"Okay! Okay!" Cloud cried, allowing one more kiss before pushing Sephiroth away. "Stop bothering me, I'm not done bathrooming!"

Sephiroth laughed thoroughly at the word 'bathrooming', then picked himself back up and gave Cloud some space. "But you gotta know that I loved it. Okay?"

"Fine! Now shut up a minute," Cloud smiled, crossing his arms over his lap and concentrating on quietly ejecting waste from his body - which was much easier now that he knew Sephiroth wasn't disappointed in him. And honestly, post anal sex dumps were the most enjoyable dumps ever. It was sort of disgusting to admit, but it was the truth; he was relaxed, he was loose, and it was nice and slippery and easy. He was glad their relationship had finally elevated to the level in which he could use the toilet in front of Sephiroth without feeling too awkward.

Plus when he cleaned up with baby wipes, it left him nice and fresh for morning activities. One night of their summer break, Cloud had been lazy and had fallen asleep right after sex. The next morning, a frisky Sephiroth had flicked his tongue into the ring of Cloud's ass and was greeted with a mini waterfall of his own semen. Even though Sephiroth had made a very memorable face, it was totally disgusting and Cloud vowed to clean up every single time so it never happened again.

He had grown to love getting rimmed, and he never wanted Sephiroth to have to think twice about doing it... But that expression on Sephiroth's face was worth it once, though. Cloud snickered to himself.

Sephiroth paused. "What?"

"Nothing," Cloud grinned. And feeling open and honest, he sat up a little bit. "... Seph. Can I tell you a secret?"

"Tell me all of 'em," Sephiroth invited, gently scrubbing the mostly dried come off of his torso.

"You know I do my best to last for you in bed. But it's hard because... when you make love to me, I have these orgasms... on the inside."

"Duh."

"You knew?" Cloud balked.

"I get 'em too when you fuck me. It's normal."

"It is?" Cloud blinked. "But you don't act like it! You're so quiet and still when you bottom!"

"They're not crazy intense or anything. Just a nice little bump now and then," Sephiroth replied thoughtfully as he rinsed off. "Besides, if I made too much noise you'd probably bust your nut even sooner."

"Good point," Cloud grumbled, blushing all over again as he began to thoroughly clean himself with his supply of moist wipes.

Sephiroth finished drying his chest with a hand towel, "Will you tell me somethin' else?"

"What?" Cloud prompted.

"What'd it feel like just now?"

"Really, really good... and really, really horrible. You made me come so hard I think some of my soul came out," Cloud finally flushed the toilet, and then approached Sephiroth with a hug. Sephiroth leaned down into the embrace, planting several kisses along Cloud's shoulders. "Lemme wash my hands real quick."

Sephiroth moved out of the way and stood behind Cloud, resting his chin on top of his head. "Now that we know you can come with no hands... wanna try it again?"

"Someday," Cloud shrugged.

Sephiroth's hands cupped Cloud's waist, and he swayed suggestively. "... Why not now? It'd be kinda fun to hook you up with some restraints from that straight jacket of yours - "

"No!" Cloud's head snapped up and he gave Sephiroth a panicked look in the mirror. "I'd probably die. I'll be the one to decide when and if I want to do that again."

"If I decide to give you that choice, that is..." Sephiroth prodded with a smug grin. "I don't need to have you tied up to make you come, Cloud."

"Don't you dare," Cloud scowled prettily, his big eyes narrowing and button nose scrunching. It was like the cutest little kitten that ever lived attempting to look like a big, scary panther.

Sephiroth chuckled wickedly, smugly laying kisses against Cloud's ear. "... Or what?"

It was rowdy instinct on Cloud's part. He utterly forgot himself, and instead felt as though he was responding to Cameron's teasing, an insult from a classmate, or even a mocking embrace from a sparring partner. But as Sephiroth chuckled in his ear, challenging him... Cloud's elbow shot back and jabbed into Sephiroth's diaphragm, knocking most of the wind out of him.

There was an enormous silence that followed. They stared at each other in the mirror, Sephiroth breathing deeply from the shocking blow, and Cloud gasping on small sips of air, completely horrified at what he'd done to his lover and his General.

Sephiroth leaned forward, resting on his palms and trapping Cloud against the sink. His face remained a deadly, serious mask. "... If you connected a little bit higher, that might have hurt."

Cloud held his lover's stare, "... You can't make me come again if I don't want to."

"I think you're a nasty little bitch, and you'll be beggin' me for it," Sephiroth answered quickly, overlapping words with suggestive logic like a true politician.

"If I'm a nasty little bitch, you're a nasty big bitch!" Cloud growled, a sly smile hinting on his lips despite his attempts to keep it at bay. His poker face failed, but his point got across as his bare ass pressed against Sephiroth. He easily ducked underneath his arm and sauntered back to bed, spending a little more time than was absolutely necessary on his hands and knees, his back arched deeply as he slowly made his way beneath the covers.

"... It's on," Sephiroth finally murmured. He took a moment to fix his slightly smudged eye makeup before turning off the light and following his lover to bed. He didn't know what was going to happen when he got there, but was eager to find out.

It was probably time to start keeping mouth guards in the lube drawer.

A/N

1 - In case youre wondering, April is about 33 years old. If you think that's icky and gross and ancient, you're too damn young to be reading this story.

2 - This is probably the last of the fluff for a while. Shit's about to git REAL up in this mutha.

3 - And as always, thanks for your reviews and lovely feedback! I do have art and stuff for you guys, but sadly my laptop might have really bit the dust this time. I've gotta make some time to go up to the college labs to be able to work on it :( sad. So just stay tuned to my deviant art page and I'll put up some chapter images asap. I also made a short little 12 page doujinshi for you, but since it's all on my shitted out laptop I'll just tell you : it's BA!Cloud fucking Sephiroth like a big fat slut in his office. Ukeroth for everybody! Nothing is better than Seph taking cock from Cloud. Nothing. That's science.


	27. Medic

When Cloud finally woke up, he was confronted with the fact that he had been sleeping face down in Sephiroth's armpit.

Yesterday had all led up to this. A rigorous school day, reuniting with Sephiroth, the Halloween party, a million alcoholic beverages, and then two solid early morning hours of beautiful, poetic story book passion.

It'd have to be a fucking filthy story book, but Cloud certainly felt like he was in love with a charming prince. It had been a perfect first anniversary.

And now Cloud felt like pure hell.

It was a supreme hangover that made him wish to evacuate his own body. His head was killing him, his stomach ached, his limbs were sore, his throat was that special brand of blowjob raw, and his ass was blasted apart. He needed to perform so many bodily functions that he didn't even know where to begin.

He was still face down in Sephiroth's armpit, but that was the least of his problems.

It occurred to Cloud that this was supposed to be an unattractive and humorous part of human anatomy. Maybe it was due to Sephiroth's questionable humanity, but his armpit was anything but unattractive.

It was... inviting. And it fit Cloud's face nicely. All he had to do was pucker his lips in order to kiss it, so he did.

No reaction from Sephiroth.

Cloud kissed it again, even daring to swipe at it with his tongue.

"Stop..." Sephiroth brought both arms down and curled onto his side, forcing Cloud to move off of him. The sudden movement made Cloud clutch his head and moan.

"Seph, I'm ill. Do you have anything for a headache?"

"The fuck?" Sephiroth groaned, making a series of snort-like noises. He only managed to crack his eyes open, and the glare that glowed through his lashes was deadly.

Cloud whined and cuddled closer to reclaim some real estate on the pillows, "I'm hung over and fucked to death. I need help."

"Eat... you're dehydrated an' blood sugar... prolly..." Sephiroth lost interest in what he was saying, shut his eyes, and began to snore again.

Cloud considered finding a new way to bother him, but decided to leave him alone. It was almost three in the afternoon and food to settle his tummy sounded nice.

Cloud lifted himself from the bed and knotted a pair of Sephiroth's sweatpants around his hips. He then snatched both his and Sephiroth's cell phones off the floor. The "snatch" was slow, and the vertigo afterwards caused him to stumble most of the way to the bathroom, where he enjoyed a very long, very satisfying whizz.

He brushed his teeth and headed to the kitchen, where he insatiably downed three large glasses of ice water, rapid fire. The General was right about being dehydrated. Cloud felt his headache slowly abate, and ravenous hunger take over where nausea left off.

He phoned his mother while he made himself a late lunch of fibre cereal and a sliced banana. He added some honey to the bowl, in hopes of replenishing all the calories he'd lost last night dancing and being sexually tormented.

While it rang he threw in some coconut shavings he found in Sephiroth's junk food cabinet. Then some walnuts, mini marshmallows, and chocolate chips. There was now more bullshit in the bowl than cereal, and it was gorgeous.

"What?" April finally answered.

"That's a fine fucking way for a mother to greet her only son," Cloud responded through a full mouth. He took his breakfast to the living room.

"Make it quick, I'm on the highway and jamming."

He spooned more of the high calorie cereal mix into his mouth, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well?" He repeated. "What happened last night with Zack?"

"That's a rude question, Clow. Not to mention none of your fucking business."

"It is so my fucking business!" Cloud cried out, and then lowered his voice when he remembered that Sephiroth was still trying to sleep. "Just confirm or deny!"

"Have I ever called you to see what you did the night before? No - because I respect you. And I'm completely repulsed by the idea of you getting screwed."

"It's not like I'm asking for gross details! I just wanna know!" Cloud cried. "Zack's not some random asshole, he's like... my big brother."

"Deny."

Cloud was stunned, bewildered, perplexed. "So... you didn't sleep with Zack?"

"No."

"Why the hell not?" Cloud cried, wiggling excitedly on the couch as he dished more food into his mouth. "What'd he do wrong? Oh God tell me!"

"I can't talk about it right now, I'm trying to drive," April lied as she lit a cigarette. She had a hundred hands while she was driving, and she used them all to talk, smoke, eat, change CD's and smack her passengers.

"C'mon!"

"Zack is a child," April told him. "All he wanted was for me to listen to him talk, so I listened to him talk. He's a nice boy... a very nice boy in fact. Emphasis on boy. Get it?"

Cloud didn't get it at all. Zack was basically irresistible.

He loved Sephiroth with a hungry, tireless devotion. But if the circumstances were different, Cloud would drill deep into that juicy, heterosexual, squat-rounded ass until Zack forgot what women were.

In essence, Cloud was not a nice boy, "Did you at least go down on him?"

"I don't go down on anybody anymore," April stated. "I've had enough dick down my throat to last a lifetime. Until I find somebody I love, that I actually want to go down on, I'm on strike."

"Did you kiss him?" Cloud bargained, suddenly desperate for his mother to be the slut the wives of Nibelheim feared and loathed. Usually she bragged about these matters in order to humiliate Cloud, but now she was acting downright prude. Something about it was unsettling.

"Clow, what's your problem? I'm telling you that nothing happened."

"Well why the fuck did you even stay with him?" Cloud squawked.

"Since when do you police what I do, you little shit? Why am I even discussing this with you?"

"Because I'm your son and I care," Cloud said evenly, pulling his voice down into the most grown up tone he possessed. "I don't want you to live alone, mom. I want you to find someone who's great, and I just... I like talking to you about these romantic things. You're more than just my mom, you're like my best girl friend. You've helped me so much with Sephiroth, and now I wanna help you."

"... You're gonna make me cry," April said softly. "... Clow. When you get to be my age, you'll find that a decent conversation can be a lot nicer than a random fuck. I stayed with your friend because he can carry on, and I guess I needed to talk as well. There, now you know."

Cloud pondered over the issue, and wondered if perhaps his mother was simply a bit... Lonely. Coming from Nibelheim he could see how a larger city could lead to feelings of isolation. He was crammed in with hundreds of other teenage boys, but often felt completely alone in the crowd. "What's the situation in Junon? Have you uh... 'met' anyone yet?"

"You mean fucked?" April asked dryly.

"Well, 'met' is a nicer way to put it."

"I haven't lost my touch, yet. I have met some people. Some very unimportant people," April admitted. "And from one friend to another... I'd slit your scrawny throat if it meant I'd meet a decent looking, grown man with no baggage and a real job. And if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not talk about it anymore right now."

There was a beat of silence before he cleared his throat. "Love you."

"Love you too, kiddo," She said before hanging up.

It left a melancholy residue, but at least he had his question answered. He had to admit that it was a small relief that Zack hadn't fucked his mother. But still… it was a little anticlimactic.

Perhaps the Rufus situation would be more fruitful! Cloud scrunched his shoulders in delight as he opened Sephiroth's phone to hunt down the Vice President's number. Cloud wanted to know the gritty details about Angeal Hewley! Inches, diameter, mass, circumference, elasticity...

Cloud paused, holding his breath and listening for any sign that the General might be awake. There was only steady breathing coming from down the hall.

Cloud realized that he was nervous. Sephiroth had never given him a chance to look through his phone before. Wasn't it every boyfriend's right to inspect his man's belongings?

He went to the pictures first, searching for anything that might incriminate Sephiroth as a cheater, a scoundrel, or a pornography addict.

But all Cloud discovered was an embarrassingly vast folder of photos of... himself.

Some were explicit, downright pornographic, but most weren't. Along with surprise snapshots, unflattering angles, funny incidents and even a romantic looking kiss or two, Cloud revisited all the dirty pictures he'd sent to Sephiroth during his time away. In the back of his mind, he always wondered if the General laughed at, or was bored by the naughty pictures... but it was obvious that he thought they were worth keeping.

Cloud also found loads of other things Sephiroth had taken snapshots of, and they were even more interesting. There were views from airship windows, dead monsters, candid photos of the other Generals, Zack doing and wearing goofy things, Vincent Valentine smoking, Rhonda and her babies, random bits of architecture, and somewhat artistically presented plates of food.

Cloud lost himself for several long minutes, looking through images of the things and people his favorite person cared about.

Cloud then went to the messages. Sephiroth apparently didn't delete texts, ever. There were over four thousand from himself alone, stemming from Christmas day when he first got his cell phone.

It was like a digital time capsule, every fight, flirtation and frustration was preserved to the day, hour, minute, and second. He hoped Sephiroth would keep them forever.

There were another couple thousand from Sephiroth's friends and coworkers. It was way too overwhelming to even begin to read them all.

So Cloud finally went to his destination, which was Sephiroth's address book. He scrolled through the endless list of names twice.

Rufus' personal phone number wasn't in there... but Angeal's was.

Would Angeal really answer a text from Cloud? ... Probably not. Cloud hadn't even really spoken to the man. Especially not enough to be asking random personal questions.

He'd answer Sephiroth, though.

Cloud bit his lip as he carefully crafted a message to the most honorable, beefcaked General of all. He imitated Sephiroth's texting style almost too perfectly : hey so whered u go last nite fuckeeer lol ;0

Cloud immediately felt naughty and dirty, but there was still snoring coming from the bedroom. And he could easily delete the messages later, so fuck it!

Cloud was almost done eating his breakfast when there came a vibrating reply from Angeal. He scrambled around on the couch as he seized Sephiroth's phone and eagerly checked the message.

Angeal - Drove the losers home, had a few drinks... blasted Rufus good. Gen fell asleep early, a two pump chump as usual.

Cloud literally shoved his face into a couch pillow in an attempt to stifle his laughter. When it was under control he replied : LOL! Good for u!

It only took a few moments for Angeal to reply : Why are you texting me, dork? Enjoy that hot little piece you never stfu about

Cloud squished his face back into the pillow, and kicked his legs wildly. Angeal Hewley had called him hot! And little, but that could be forgiven. Everyone was little compared to Angeal.

He quickly deleted the message trail, and stood in the living room to stretch. He felt much better, and decided to surprise Sephiroth with some food and a sloppy blowjob. He quickly put in an online order to Sephiroth's favorite pizza place, then slipped back into the bedroom where he had approximately twenty-five minutes to suck him off.

He silently placed Sephiroth's phone back on the floor near his discarded costume and crawled onto the bed, smiling down at his beautiful, sexy sleeping angel.

Except that Sephiroth wasn't sleeping, "Why'd you take my phone?"

Cloud's entire body seized in shock. "G-god! What's wrong with you?"

Sephiroth opened his eyes and repeated the question, "Why'd you take my phone?"

Cloud sat up on his knees and put his hands on his hips. "... I was checking for signs that you might be cheating on me."

"You're so full of shit."

"I know!" Cloud laughed merrily as he bent over Sephiroth to steal a kiss. "I was just looking at your phone for a - "

"You didn't delete any pictures of you, did you?" Sephiroth gasped, drawing himself up onto his elbows. "I need those!"

Cloud's face heated and he waved his hands to silence Sephiroth's paranoia. "I didn't delete anything, I promise! I just wanted to find out about... Rufus and Genesis and Angeal. Remember?"

Sephiroth looked confused for a moment, and then scratched the top of his head with a faint smile. "Oh. Whadja find out?"

"Angeal totally did it with Rufus! And apparently Genesis is a minute man!"

"Big fuckin' surprise, that selfish mother fucker," Sephiroth snorted, "... I can't believe Angeal actually told you that."

"No... He actually told you..." Cloud admitted meekly. "I just asked him in a text from your phone, that's all."

Sephiroth stared at Cloud for a beat, and then narrowed his eyes. "... So you impersonated me to get information out of another General?"

Cloud's mouth dropped open, "Oh. Uh. I didn't mean it like that..."

"You do realize that's grounds for formal punishment and losin' rank. If you had any."

"Well..." Cloud frowned, crossing his arms over his bare torso as he shrank in on himself. Even though he was wearing more clothes, he suddenly felt far more vulnerable. "I was just being nosy and having some fun. I was going to tell you about it, of course."

"Angeal is a General, your superior. Genesis is a General, your superior. Rufus is the vice president of the company you're contracted to work for... he's superior to all of us, as fucked up as that is. But what they do in private is none of your business, and unless they volunteer that information to you in a casual setting, you keep your little nose out of their shit."

Cloud's stomach tightened and he felt supremely embarrassed of his childish actions. "... I guess I... feel close to them. They're your friends, but sometimes I feel like they're my friends, too."

"I'm not tryin' to be a dick, but you crossed a line," Sephiroth's face didn't soften, although his monotonous voice held a gentler tone. "I'm gonna tell you this once, then I'll drop it... You don't wanna get caught up in the drama that goes on in this company. There is so much shit floating around that people drown in it while their careers go nowhere. I'll be damned if that's gonna happen to you. You're better than that."

Cloud looked down at his hands, unable to meet Sephiroth's cool, wise gaze. "... I guess."

The hard tone returned to Sephiroth's voice, "And if you ever, ever take my phone again for such a dumb fuck reason, there'll be some consequences... You look really cute in my sweats right now so I'm not sure what they'll be, but there'll be some and they'll suck. I'll share everything I have with you, but not information that could damage someone. Your superiors deserve their privacy and your absolute respect. Got it?"

Cloud bit his lower lip to halt it from trembling. Sephiroth had slid flirtation into his scolding, but it didn't ease the embarrassment, "...Yes, Sir."

Sephiroth rolled onto his back and lifted his arms, "C'mere. I have a hangover, I'm bein' a grouch."

Cloud was slow to approach, but gingerly laid his head against his lover's collarbone. He was stiff, but allowed Sephiroth to fold him into an embrace. "... My friends like you. Everyone likes you a lot. People tell me all the time that you're so handsome, that you're good for me, and that I'm lucky to have someone who puts up with me so well."

Cloud softened a bit at that and smiled, "... Really?"

"Yeah. Even Zack says you take good care of me."

"More like I fuck up, complain a lot and get in your way," Cloud shrugged helplessly. "I know I'm a crappy boyfriend sometimes."

"But you make me happy all the time."

Cloud felt the awkward tension leave his body. He curled against his lover and dared to brush a kiss across his lips, and nearly melted when they responded against his.

"You taste nice. What'd ya eat?" Sephiroth asked, licking his lips.

"Just some cereal," Cloud lied, and offered more of the taste. After a few teasing kisses he pulled back with a sober, militant expression that was rare to find on his face. "... I'm sorry, Seph. Really. I knew it was wrong when I did it. Nothing like that will happen again."

"Alright," Sephiroth accepted the apology, but did not offer one for being a hardass about it. It was innocent and frankly no big deal, but if he let small things slide Cloud could someday make a mistake that could cost him his career, or worse.

Nobody on Sephiroth's speed dial had a huge problem with killing people. Even if they acted like morons.

"What are you smiling about?" Cloud asked softly, letting his fingertip fall into one of Sephiroth's shallow dimples.

"... This is completely hypocritical for me to ask, but off the record... what did Angeal say exactly about Genesis?"

"The term he used was 'two pump chump'," Cloud leaned on his elbow with a grin, taking his weight off of his lover to allow him room to laugh.

There came a knock at the door, and Sephiroth's features blossomed with unabashed delight. "You ordered me a pizza?"

"How'd you guess?"

"I know that knock!" He grinned, rolling himself out of bed and groping underneath for clothes. He quickly shimmied into a pair of jeans, and then leaned over Cloud to place a kiss between his eyes. "See? You totally take care of me."

Cloud yelled after him, "Tell me about it! I was about to blow you before you got all mad at me!"

After murmuring with the friendly delivery man, Sephiroth came back with the sodas and pizza boxes Cloud had ordered. "You couldn't blow me right now if you tried - there isn't a drop in me. Besides I'm savin' it for later."

Cloud went after his own smaller pizza. The cereal had only temporarily satisfied his teenage hunger. "So... What are we doing today?"

Sephiroth took three massive bites but still managed to communicate, "Hmg?"

"You said you had a surprise activity today... for our anniversary?" Cloud's face heated a little. He'd been ecstatically looking forward to the anniversary surprise Sephiroth had mentioned, but hadn't brought it up for fear of seeming selfish. He'd feel pretty lame if the busy General had forgotten all about it.

"Mm-hm," Sephiroth nodded before cracking open a soda to wash down the food in his mouth. He swished it around thoughtfully before finally swallowing. "... I don't think you were serious at the time, but you inspired an idea and I can't stop thinkin' about it."

"Okay..." Cloud began eating quickly, trying to only allow a fraction of his curiosity show.

"And I know I'm probably talkin' about thousands of gil here, and I don't care. We've been together a whole year and all we ever do is cheap shit - when we're together at all. Money is no object to me today, I really don't care how much it costs - "

Cloud's eyes were bright and wild, "What are you suggesting?"

After another attempt to better articulate, Sephiroth finally just blurted it out, "You wanna go get one of those big ass weddin' cakes from that bakery on 4th street? Then get naked and have a cake fight?"

After an extended silence, Cloud answered with utmost earnesty, "... More than anything in the world."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was 4:30 AM and even the brightest of morning people were dragging ass around the Shin-Ra headquarters. Sephiroth had slept the previous day away with the help of his lovely assistant Valium. He was ready to be briefed and to run head first into another weird, unpredictable day of his life.

"Mornin'," He greeted Shelly, the floor secretary. He dipped his hand into her candy dish and hoped to come back with something good, but it was only a mint. He popped it into his mouth anyway.

"Mm," She responded, sleepy yet engrossed in a college textbook.

Five minutes passed before Sephiroth poked his head back out of his office with a dark expression, "Shelly. My schedule's empty for the whole week. Don't tell me I woke up at three this mornin' for nothin'."

His secretary looked up slowly from highlighting a passage in her college textbook. "Oh. You have beta testing at the medical lab today. Tomorrow you have off for recovery."

"Oh yeah?" He asked, coming out of the office and crossing his arms.

"The lab just called about an hour ago and cleared you off," she said, capping her highlighter while shifting in her seat. "Sorry. I have midterms next week... I'm a little distracted."

"You're fired."

"I said I'm sorry."

"Prove it by cleanin' my office."

"... Can I be fired instead?"

"No," He shoved his hand deep into her candy dish and impolitely dug around until he found the good stuff.

She frowned at the bare man hand molesting her candy, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but since you'll be out of office the next two days I'll just tell you now," She thrust a folder in his direction, ignoring his groan. Blue folders always contained briefings for business trips, which were much more involved and boring than missions. "Wednesday afternoon, you have to fly to the Crater to perform an inspection. You'll be back Sunday morning; complete briefing is in the mission packet."

Sephiroth scowled as his annoyance graduated to actual anger. He hated trips that stole his weekend days, it interfered with the only time he had with Cloud.

He opened the folder and scanned for his trip mates, fully expecting to see names of a contracted inspection team. Instead there was only one name; Vincent Valentine.

The Captain of the Turks was accompanying him to perform said inspection of the new Northern Crater Turk and SOLDIER training facility.

Shelly was rattling off information that he wasn't listening to, and finally sighed and leaned back in her seat. "Anything else and you'll have to talk to Lazard about it."

"That'll do," He tucked his file under his arm. "Will you brush anything on Sunday off 'til Monday?"

"Already done, I figured you'd want some lovey dovey time. You won't have to come back to the office until next Monday. Hence the empty schedule this week - you're welcome in advance."

"Thank you," He remarked, deliberately keeping a smile off his face.

"I need lovey dovey time, too! I have a new boyfriend!" She slapped her textbook shut. "And do I really have to clean your office? There were toenail clippings all over the floor last time."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The second quarter of Cloud's second year at the academy began. It was one more eight week chunk of time that would bring him closer to the SOLDIER entrance exams.

His time at the Shin-Ra Military Academy was nearly halfway over. It was enough to make a boy shit himself.

After retrieving his new schedule, he had to line up for an unexpected inspection before even getting a chance to look at it. He cursed the fact that he was standing between Skylar and Cameron, because his friends had both coasted into the 'six feet and over' club. Cloud's modest height created a very noticeable dip in the lineup of young men.

The inspection sergeants were mostly silent, only stopping to fix uniforms, or to offer disapproving glances. When they arrived at Cloud, they both paused. One straightened his tie while the other looked him over like a recently evolved sea slug that had just learned how to stand upright.

Cloud knew his slender body suggested laziness, but never expected to hear it aloud. "Are you aware of the minimum weight class for SOLDIER, Strife?"

Cloud nodded eagerly, although emotionally unprepared for the question. "Sir, yes Sir."

"Are you aware that you are not in it?"

"Sir, yes Sir," Cloud swallowed before he added, "I will make the minimum weight class by August, Sir."

Something like condescending pity passed over the man's face before he moved on. But not before nodding approvingly at Cameron as they continued down the line.

Cloud's stomach dropped into his balls. His instructors, his coaches, Sephiroth... Everyone always encouraged him, remarking on his work ethic and improvements and strength and potential...

With one burning, loaded question from a random sergeant, Cloud's confidence had been decimated.

As the lineup was dismissed, Cloud unhappily regarded his new schedule.

6:00 Run, 7:00 Survive II, 8:00 Intermediate Sword Training, 10:00 Introduction to Infantry, 10:50 Wutainese Linguistics, 11:45 Lunch Break, 12:25 Literature II, 13:15 Field Emergency Medical Preparedness, 14:00 Chemistry, 15:00 Materia I, 17:00 Baseball.

Cloud's eyes bounced over the schedule again. No drum class? And... Infantry Intro?

"Cam, let me see yours!" Cloud cried, snatching his paper away. There was nothing about infantry on Cam's schedule.

"Wha's wrong?" Cam frowned as Cloud smacked his schedule back into his chest.

"I need to talk to someone before class starts!" Cloud yelled, already running to the administration office.

"Can I help you?" The office manager asked as Cloud burst into the building.

"Yes ma'am! I need to speak to an academic advisor," Cloud said as calmly and politely as he could manage. "I only have ten minutes before my first class, but I would really appreciate it."

"What's your question?" The lady inquired, looking curiously at the schedule clutched in Cloud's hands.

Cloud really didn't want to be cock blocked from seeing an actual advisor, but wearily shared his concern. "... Well ma'am, I just got my schedule and I have this strange class called Intro to Infantry - "

"Oh, that," The lady waved her hand dismissively. "They gave it to you because you had an empty slot. Go to class."

Cloud lost his small town politeness, and replaced it with searing Midgarian sass, "I chose Advanced Drumming! I didn't have an empty slot, someone in this office fucked up! ... Ma'am."

"Live with it. We don't change schedules. Ever. Academy policy."

Cloud pushed away from the desk with a growl and flew across the campus towards the band room. There was a note on the door indicating no entry due to creating music, but Cloud ignored it.

Inside he found trumpet players and flutists. They were chumming around and putting their instruments together for class, while Coach Hendrix brewed coffee in his office.

Cloud barged right in. "You fucked up my schedule!"

Hendrix tensed at the surprise intrusion, but relaxed when he realized who it was. "Mornin' Cloud. I meant to talk to you - "

"They gave me some bullshit Infantry class instead of advanced drumming! Will you fix it?"

The coach shook his head, "Sorry man, we got a lot of new sign-ups for drumming this quarter. It's pretty exciting; we even got a little extra funding! To make room for the new sign ups, I had to cut advanced drumming. Next quarter I'll probably have enough room for you original guys to come back."

Cloud felt like he'd been punched in the throat. "... You don't want me on the squad, anymore?"

"Oh buddy, it's not that! You're a vet, you helped get the band department all this great attention... you're very valuable to me. But you already know all the tempos. It's better to teach new guys and have a bigger squad... Right?"

"... I guess." All Cloud heard was rejection, no matter how logical the reason. He didn't have drum class, anymore. And instead of another sword class, or something useful like SOLDIER exam preparation classes, the school saw it fit to prepare him for... infantry.

Hendrix frowned as the coffee pot completed brewing with a crescendo of bubbling noise. The man glanced uncertainly between the emotional teenager and the fragrant brew. "... Want some coffee?"

Cloud's vision swam with tears, and he turned his face to hide them. "No thank you, I have to get to class."

"Just keep sharp on your own in case we need you, Cloud. You're first pick if there's a conflict. You're one of the best I've got! ...Okay?"

"Goodbye," Cloud sniffed, and turned his back in time for tears to fall as he hurried from the band room. Probably never to return!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

As masochistic as he knew it was, Sephiroth felt at home in the cold, dark medical labs of the Shin-Ra building.

There was a distant shout for help, followed by a gunshot. Somewhere, an animal made unnatural cry in response to the noise. The clicking of a woman's heels, the snapping of a pen, the smell of burnt wire.

Childhood.

When the moment of nostalgia passed, Sephiroth exited the elevator. Instinct made him take a route past his old room, and as usual he felt the need to peek inside.

He always wondered if he'd find someone in there. But it was still just a closet for cleaning supplies.

Once he neared the testing area, he was greeted by Rhonda. They shared a warm hug and a few exchanges on their personal lives.

Rhonda was eager to talk shop, and deliberately steered Sephiroth away from zones that were heavily monitored. She whispered, "So hey, there's some weird shit going on around here lately."

"What kind of shit?"

"A whole lot of those weird clones."

Sephiroth's lip curled in annoyance, "Are you tellin' me I came here today to kill clones? Jesus Christ, I'da brought a book."

"No, Seph. When I say a whole lot, I mean a whole fucking lot. Lot 12 is completely renovated as a living facility and full of fucking clones. I think they got something right this time," Rhonda said, morbidly excited. "You're gonna fight the best ones today."

"Fight?" Sephiroth asked, mildly interested but feigning an aloof demeanor. "Like an actual fight fight?"

"It's just what I heard. Hojo's team has been pretty obsessed lately."

"Must be why he hasn't been up my ass lately," Sephiroth muttered. He let Rhonda loop an arm around his waist and lead him further into the lab.

Sephiroth had come into contact with dozens of clones of himself throughout his life.

They were always kind of a drag to be around. Sephiroth was an intelligent man, and was fully aware that he was cut from the same cloth they were. But he also knew he was a special one, better than they were, far more complete. They were pieces of him, and Sephiroth didn't want them around.

Maybe it was some brand of self-hatred, but how else was he supposed to think of them? They were an embarrassment. When they were spared a moment to speak, they rambled about Jenova and wanting to become "one" with him.

Yeah, "one". Clones were in a constant state of arousal, and completely perverted. How could he not be disgusted with the sight of them?

And really... It was kinder to kill them, because there was nothing else to life for them. Either they were half formed, had no coordination to fight, or had a severe mental handicap. Sephiroth supposed there was no substitute for a cold mother's uncaring womb, the right amount of Jenova juice, and Vincent Valentine's swimmers. The three had created a monster, but a highly functioning one at least.

Once he arrived at the testing arena, Sephiroth greeted Hojo's team. A few of the men remained aloof and professional, but most behaved like doting old uncles, patting his back and reminiscing about the days when Sephiroth stood no taller than their knees.

Sephiroth was then stripped naked, sanitized, covered in sensors, and was redressed in a motion sensitive rubber suit. He looked over at his reflection while he tied his hair back, and to him it was a familiar sight. He'd been doing this since he was a little boy.

The clone was brought in, but not on a stretcher or floating in a tank. It walked all on its' own, confident, aggressive and clearly ready for a fight.

Sephiroth didn't like the way the thing stared directly at him. The gaze was stony, pale and fierce. The face looked like a distorted version of Sephiroth's, and his hair was buzzed clean. It was clearly able to keep weight on, and carried itself as though it was... somebody.

For the first time in months, Sephiroth felt pre-battle shakes, and fought with his will to keep his fingers steady. He was thrilled at the prospect of murder, of permanently erasing this clone and the look of condescending challenge on his pasty face.

There was a buffet of weapons to choose from, but Sephiroth wished he could use Masamune. It gave him the luxury of distancing himself from an opponent. He didn't want to get close to the clone, who had the gall to walk directly up to him.

As if that wasn't irritating enough, the thing fucking spoke to him. "Hello."

Sephiroth ignored it, uninterested in anything it had to say by default. There was a butcher knife on the table, and Sephiroth smirked at it. Probably a joke from Hojo.

"We're going to fight," The clone said evenly. "Winner gets to be the Sephiroth."

Sephiroth almost ignored it again, but decided to reply out of pure curiosity. "What?"

"Winner gets to be the Sephiroth."

"Step back and wait 'til I'm done decidin' how to murder you," Sephiroth gritted out tightly. He felt his accent come out strong, almost like a twin needing to differentiate itself from the other. It bothered him that he even felt the need to.

"Winner gets the tank," the clone continued. "Winner gets to be the Sephiroth."

Sephiroth chose a machine gun just to test the weight of it in his hands. He closed one eye and pointed it at the clone, but set it back down in favor of a switchblade. How very 'West Side Story'; he smirked and flicked his wrist a few times to see how easily it opened and closed. It was damn sharp, and Sephiroth was almost tempted to use it.

The clone reached for any weapon, running its fingers perversely close to Sephiroth's. "... Winner gets Cloud."

Sephiroth's body reacted, and the clone was sent sprawling. The thing leapt up to its feet before crouching low, smiling like an idiot. Sephiroth flipped open the blade and attacked, concerned only with permanently closing the mouth that had Cloud's name in it.

To the clone's credit, it managed a mild scuffle before its neck was slit wide open. Sephiroth dug the blade in to the bone, then immediately backed off when he realized he was mutilating a corpse. The fight was over and this wasn't fucking personal. He refused to let it be.

His chest rose and fell as he looked down at it. It lied there in a heap, staring up at nothing. The gray eyes seemed no more empty now than when they were alive.

He had an urge to let a long rope of saliva fall onto the thing's dead face, but instead turned away to clean himself up. He accepted sanitized and a hot towel, catching droplets of blood on his face, in his hair. The more blood he found the angrier he became, and paused when the doctors began to talk amongst themselves.

"... Tits," one of the doctors blurted. "I thought we had something this time."

"We have the rest of the batch," Hojo reminded him. "That one was only the runt. Relax."

"Are they well aware of the incentives to staying alive? Remember how we had that suicide pact to deal with last year, they didn't even try. That was a huge waste of time."

"They seem to be stronger when they're able to communicate with each other," One of the female doctors stated clinically. "But I'm not sure allowing them to know that they're copies of Sephiroth is beneficial. There's no evidence supporting – "

Sephiroth made a fireball large enough to engulf the entire weapons table in flames. It quickly spread up onto the wall and set off the sprinkler system.

"Was that really necessary?" A tech yelled, scurrying to cover the computer equipment before it became waterlogged.

Among the frantic assistants and cursing doctors, Sephiroth approached the director of the entire fiasco with rage written across his face, "What are you tellin' these asshole clones about Cloud for?"

"Nobody told it anything," Hojo said in a placating manner, standing beneath an umbrella held by a drenched intern. Throughout the years, the team had become well aware to be prepared for any element where Sephiroth was concerned. Water was pouring out of the ceiling, but he spoke with his usual brand of relaxed cynicism. "That's actually called memory assimilation, which allows the clones to overcome that pesky inability to thrive syndrome."

Sephiroth chewed that over for a moment, his chin raised despite the fact that he was becoming soaking wet. "... Huh?"

"Don't concern yourself with it, General."

"I'm very fuckin' concerned with it. I'm an adult now, and I have a right to know what the hell is going on."

The sprinklers were finally turned off, and the fire was under control. Hojo stepped closer to Sephiroth from under the umbrella, looking up at him almost fondly. "Do you really want to know?"

Sephiroth felt the urge to take a step back, but stood his ground with a confidence that was shrinking.

"Everybody dry off and take ten," Hojo announced to the room, then took another step closer to Sephiroth. "Come this way, I'll show you what I've been making."

With a struggled limp, he led Sephiroth through a series of hallways and doors. The silence of words highlighted the sounds of uneven footsteps and the doctor's slightly obnoxious wheezy breathing, so Sephiroth finally spoke. "Did you say memory assimilation?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?" He asked, picturing the clones having mechanical minds that could simply accept the input of outside memories.

"Suggestion is a powerful tool. If you show an artificial life form a newsreel on a very famous person, let them read a few very revealing magazine articles about that person... and they easily pick up on the smaller details themselves. Were you concerned that we were dangling your accomplishments and belongings in front of these artificial clones as an incentive to killing you?"

Sephiroth tilted his head. He always felt so stupid and inarticulate when speaking with Hojo. "Well… I guess that's what it sounded like. He was sayin' that the winner of the fight would 'get' Cloud."

"Cloud," Hojo said with an odd tone, almost as though the Cadet were an imaginary friend come to life. "Your… lover is mentioned in many articles. The clones are fascinated with him, and with you. You can hardly blame them. Most of the world is fascinated with you, and they should be. You are my finest work. There's a step here, be careful please."

Sephiroth felt chills lick the back of his neck as the lab became colder the deeper they traveled into it. "Even if they aren't real people, it seems cruel to show them somethin' they'll never have."

"When you were small, Vincent Valentine showed you a movie called 'Halloween.' Afterwards, you became convinced that you were Michael Myers. You swore that this was your mental asylum, chasing nurses with knives. Do you remember that, Sephiroth?"

"... Vaguely," he admitted, wiping his dripping face.

Hojo nodded. "A very normal thing for a human child to do - dream, play, pretend. It troubled me at the time, because you were neither of those things. But you grew out of it, and looking back it was probably the greatest thing you've ever taught me. I realized that such an unfortunately human trait could be very useful."

Hojo led Sephiroth to Lot 12, a place that was usually vast and empty, but it was now a large containment center. Hojo passed through the additional measures of security, and Sephiroth watched him type numbers and codes, committing them to memory as was his habit. He knew the pin codes and passwords of everyone in his life, it was a feature that had been given to him from birth. As though he realized the error he'd made, Hojo suddenly covered the keypad over with one hand. It didn't matter, because Sephiroth could still decipher the code by the tone of the keys.

If Hojo was bothered by the fact that Sephiroth had access to Lot 12, he didn't show it. He continued to limp along until they were at the business end of a two-way window monitoring station.

Hojo gestured to the crowd of silver haired beings inside what appeared to be a common room, "I've come to accept that I cannot artificially engineer another like you. Even if I could, your level of combat experience is untouchable. But I'm trying to create men who could someday, under your tutelage, become great warriors. They are the makings of your future army, and you should be honored."

Sephiroth winced, but bent over slightly to peer inside the dark, depressing room. There were clones in wheelchairs, some child sized ones sitting cross legged on the floor, some standing with crossed arms. They were all crowded around a small television, and watching what appeared to be Family Matters.

"Vincent Valentine, the fool that he is, did you a favor I could never have foreseen. You're a success, Sephiroth, because you had someone's strong personality to assimilate. The best success so far, anyways. Replicating the perfect balance of foolish pop culture and combat schooling is a delicate science. Fate surely had her hand on you."

Sephiroth opened his mouth, but could think of no reply. Before he could speak, Hojo stepped towards a microphone. "Number 310, please report to the exit."

One of the child-sized ones eagerly scrambled to its feet and ran out of the room.

Hojo gave Sephiroth a small shrug. "Your next opponent. We need to test out one from the newest batch. Should only take a minute, then I'll throw another big guy at you. Hopefully most of that water has been dried up by now."

Hojo hobbled out of the room. Eventually Sephiroth followed.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

The rest of Cloud's day was sour. The classes were the same standard military affair, but with a bitter glaze of unhappiness they were completely intolerable.

Lunch was shitty, he didn't get any texts from Sephiroth that afternoon, and as expected the dreaded Infantry class was full of slackers who didn't want to be in the army in the first place, fat guys with no athletic hope, and uncoordinated geeky losers.

And now this.

Cloud glared at the tiny orange ball in his hand. He'd been glaring at it for several minutes.

"You're not trying to instigate a bar fight back home on Buttfuck Mountain," grunted Coach Bellamy, the Materia 101 instructor. It was a racist and homophobic remark, but Cloud expected it.

Bellamy had been tearing into anything that made his students stand out; skin color, stench, ugliness, acne, even the poor kid with braces heard all about it from the cruel coach. He'd decided Cloud's unique heritage and blatant homosexuality were his targets. "Do more than just stare at the damn thing, sweetheart."

"Yes, sir..." Cloud answered. Materia I was already a complete bitch, and it was only the first day.

He hated the coach, he hated the area of the field they held class in - which was right next to the Junior SOLDIER arena, and he hated materia in general.

It felt weird in his hand. Like an infected egg with something unnatural moving inside it, a shifting weight of murky energy. It was completely off putting; he much preferred holding a solid steel sword in his hand over a stupid orb.

Cloud had been dreading this, knowing he was going to suck at magic. He didn't even like the idea of it.

Maybe it was cultural. No magic went on in Nibelheim, a pretty rigid Catholic town that held its last witch burning less than thirty years prior. Cloud liked God and Jesus and church a whole lot, but being gay left him feeling sort of excluded from that club. Plus he really didn't like setting people on fire.

And even though Cloud had witnessed feats of magic, it still felt so unlikely that a miracle would happen as a result of something he himself did. Where to even begin?

Cloud let his attention wander to the Junior SOLDIER training area, where a seasoned vet was showing them the finer points of casting magic that could cure somebody of nearly any superficial wound.

But who needed cure spells when you had potions? Science was more reliable than nature or summons or whatever the fuck. What if the summon didn't feel like answering? What if the materia went haywire? People probably died all the time as a result of malfunctions.

Cloud supposed the useful thing about materia was equipping it to make weapons stronger, not so much casting spells.

And the theory of warriors having something called MP was so abstract that Cloud had a hard time buying it. Energy output had to come from somewhere he supposed. The theory said that some men naturally have more disposable MP, while others slowly gain more with experience.

"Strife, you have about half a minute to make some sparks, otherwise you're getting no points for today," Coach Bellamy announced.

Cloud balked, coming out of his thoughts. "Nobody else made sparks!"

"Everyone else at least tried," the coach pointed out. "That's more than I can say for you. Plus I'm bored. Make something happen."

"What if I don't have any MP, yet?" Cloud countered, easily hiding behind a theory he had no real faith in. A true Catholic.

"If you don't naturally have enough MP to make sparks you don't belong here. I'll pen a recommendation for your removal from the program myself. I'm sure they're hiring cocksucking barbacks back home on Mount Goatfuck."

Cloud tightened his fingers around the materia, in hopes of squeezing some magic out if it so he could get credit for the day. He knew it was in his head. If he just stopped focusing on how stupid he felt... he could concentrate on like, communing with nature. He could totally do it!

Cloud opened his third eye and allowed the forces of nature and planet Earth to fill the void where his doubt used to be.

But not really.

"I don't know what to do!" Cloud panicked.

"You cast the materia. That's what you do," the coach droned. "Don't you have materia on Brokeback Mountain?"

"It's called Nibel!" Cloud snapped. "The fucking mountain is called Nibel. The town is called Nibelheim. Okay?"

The coach appeared bewildered in jest, "Oh well excuse me! I've never met one of you sister fuckers before. Do you see any Nibelheim SOLDIERs around here? There's never been a single one. That's because SOLDIER doesn't need inbred, retarded lumberjacks. We need warriors. You're not a warrior, you're not even a lumberjack, you're a pansy, cocksucking faggot. I bet the only girl you ever fucked was your sister you sick piece of garbage."

Cloud mewed in frustration, and the keening noise grew in his throat until it finally emerged from him as a roar. "Why do you have to be such a nutsack? Why don't you do your job and teach me how to use materia instead of vomiting ignorant bullshit?"

The man seemed to welcome the outburst, "Excuses on the first day? You'll never be able to use materia. You're not even trying you weakling, you disgrace. Not even General Sephiroth is going to help get you into - "

Cloud opened his mouth to interrupt, but instead cried out in fear when a tiny firework burst in his palm.

He dropped the materia, too shocked to feel the raw wound on his palm, yet. He was too busy watching in awe as the red sparks floated down towered the ground, disappearing before they reached the perfectly manicured blades of grass.

"That," Coach Drummond announced, "... Is why I'm such a nutsack. Beginners learning how to harness intangible power will need to rely on emotions. The easiest one to invoke, especially in young men, is anger."

"You're mean to us on purpose?" Cloud cried, waving his burnt hand in futile attempts to relieve the stinging pain. He snatched the materia back up with his good hand, fully intent on hurling it at the man.

"With different types of materia we'll be delving into different emotional territory. Water is best conjured by sadness, air by joy, earth by humor oddly enough. I'm not gonna be your therapist, but do expect to shed a few tears during this quarter. I'm gonna be using any emotional triggers I can to help you pick this ability up as quickly as possible. Once you do it a few times, it'll become second nature and you won't need me in your face."

"So you didn't mean what you said about Nibelheim?" Cloud asked in wonder.

"Actually I did. I've been there, and you people really are all retarded sister fuckers."

"You're an asshole!" Cloud cried, and yelped when the materia flared in his good hand, though not quite hot enough to burn him.

"It was easier to heat it up that time, wasn't it?" The coach asked with a smug grin. Cloud was about to accuse the man of blatant mother fuckery when he turned his back to whistle to the Junior SOLDIER class. "We need a cure! Send over your cutest medic for blondie, here! He deserves it!"

The rest of his class, who had remained morbidly silent to not be a target of Bellamy's wrath of rudeness, began to snicker and whisper amongst themselves.

Cloud closed his eyes, not even thinking about shedding a single teardrop. Not in front of the Juniors. Not in front of his most important coach... biggest asshole coach maybe, but Cloud needed materia training to become a SOLDIER, and apparently he needed to be pissed off to achieve that. He wouldn't be pigeon holed as a crybaby who couldn't take a little ribbing. So what if it was true that he liked whiskey, anal sex, and sucking cock? So what?

A shirtless, sexy, hairy chested Junior came over with a cure materia equipped. "Who's hurt?"

Cloud showed his hand, and waited patiently.

"This might feel a little strange," the Junior spoke as if he were a toddler, and the benevolence coupled with physical attractiveness only made Cloud that much more enraged.

"I've had plenty of cures before, just get on with it!" He spoke in the clearest, most confident, least about-to-cry voice he could muster.

"When have you ever needed a cure?" His coach asked curiously, overseeing the Junior's application of magic.

Rough sex injuries were the first thing to spring to Cloud's mind. Sephiroth sometimes lost self-control, but always took the time to cure away stretched muscle pain... as well as handprints, bruises, scratches, bite marks...

Cloud then realized his coach was still waiting for an answer to his question. He tripped over his tongue for a moment before reaching an acceptable answer, "The, uh, Northern Crater battle. I got some shrapnel taken out up there."

The coach nodded his head respectfully. He didn't even make fun of the way Cloud said 'shrapnel', which was appreciated.

The Junior blew against Cloud's palm, glancing up with a scruffy, handsome smile. "Is that better?..."

"Thanks," Cloud grunted and blushed as he jerked his hand back, incredibly annoyed that a super hot Junior was choosing now to flirt with him.

"You're welcome," the Junior smiled again before he turned to jog back to his group.

"Do you wanna get his phone number or are you ready to take a seat?" The coach chuckled, cleverly snatching the materia away from Cloud's hand.

Cloud slithered away bashfully to sit among his classmates. It seemed he'd broken the ice, because now they all were suddenly able to spark the materia.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Hey babe what's - "

"Seph! I have had the worst day of my life!" Cloud recited the entire tale of woe without interruption.

Sephiroth was patient and kept silent until 'sister fucker', and then he totally lost it. He laughed long and hard, and Cloud loved the sound so much he had to join in despite his annoyance.

"Shut up!" Cloud cried after a length of laughter. "Someone insulted your boyfriend, shouldn't you be mad?"

"He's a Sergeant. That's basically in his DNA."

"He even invoked your name!"

Sephiroth began eating something crunchy. "You were the first one in your class to make sparks though. Did it occur to you that that's pretty awesome?"

"Well, after Materia, I had this stupid baseball cool down class. I'm fucking awful at it; I struck out both times I was at bat! Now I'm gonna get picked last for teams all quarter!"

"Who cares?" Sephiroth crunched away, unbothered by Cloud's lack of hand-eye coordination.

"Someone cruised on me in the locker room!" Cloud hissed, changing the subject and barreling right into the final horrible point of his day. "I was aggressively cruised!"

"Say what?" Sephiroth continued to crunch, only pausing to slurp loudly at some sort of beverage. "What the fuck happened?"

"He stuck his gross dick underneath my shower stall like I'm some common glory hole slut! I told him to beat it, and he started... well, beating it. Then I had to walk across campus naked in a towel with shampoo in my eyes to finish my shower in peace!"

"Okay, that might piss me off. Who did it?"

Cloud perked up at the possessive attention, but kept his voice bewildered and tortured. "I don't know. All I saw was his gross, ugly package. His balls were mismatched and his pubes were unkempt and it was awful!"

"Could you..." Sephiroth snickered. "... C- Could you point it out in a line up?"

"Seph!" Cloud shrieked indignantly. "This is not funny! I was sexually harassed! Molested, abused, practically raped!"

"You've chosen a hard life path, Cloud," Sephiroth chuckled, "When you're in an army, you're gonna have more bad days than good ones. Life's gonna suck sometimes. Throw in the fact that you're drop dead gorgeous, and life might even hand you some anonymous cocks in your shower now and then. But I'm not worried because I know you can take care of yourself. You're tenacious and badass and you can handle anything."

Usually that would have felt awesome to hear, but Cloud needed a little sympathy. "Sephiroth, I know you're trying to make me realize how insignificant my woes are, but would it kill you for once just to say, 'poor baby' and let me throw myself a pity party?"

"Wanna get some food and make out?"

Cloud's eyes widened. "... What?"

"You've got four hours before lights out. Lemme take you somewhere for this pity party of yours. But be forewarned... I might try to show you my cock."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Within the hour, Cloud was full of Burger King and pressed against Sephiroth in the backseat of his tank.

Cloud wasn't used to being able to call upon Sephiroth for actual physical comfort, and instead self-medicated while the General was away or busy. It never occurred to him once throughout his horrible day to ask Sephiroth to see him.

What an obvious solution, though. Kisses, closeness, and a little flirtation over fast food made the horrible, frustrating day fade away into the past.

When their lips became sore, Cloud found himself lying on top of Sephiroth, listening to his even breathing, the rumble of the engine and the soft noise of the car stereo. It was just chilly enough outside to need the heater, and between that and the natural heat from Sephiroth's body, the tank was a cozy cocoon on the autumn night.

Comfortable silence blanketed them. Cloud was dozing, while Sephiroth became consumed with smoothing his blonde spikes only to let them spring back up against his palm. The way it bounced gracefully back up no matter how he twisted, flattened or otherwise abused it was relaxing in and of itself, almost like Cloud had a built in stress ball.

"I love you ..." Cloud purred, and he became a bit heavier against Sephiroth's chest. "... I needed a big, long cuddle with you."

"I needed one, too," Sephiroth told him. He almost wished Cloud would ask him about his day. Not that he planned on telling him anything... but given an invitation he might have.

"Seph?" Cloud asked suddenly.

"Yeah?" He responded, pausing in the abuse of blonde hair. The little fucker couldn't read minds, could he?

"Are you good at baseball?"

"Who gives a shit about baseball?" Sephiroth murmured, relieved as well as annoyed with the useless topic. "I was just okay at it, but it was easy to cheat. I'm a lefty, we have an edge in most sports."

Cloud gave an acidic chuckle. "I've noticed. You lefties are full of dirty tricks."

"Tell ya what. I have tomorrow off. How 'bout after school we go to the park and I'll teach you to swing from the left. It'll help when sword fighting lefties, too. I can show you some dirty tricks."

Cloud gasped, "And even if tomorrow sucks like today did... I'll still get to cuddle with you again at the end!"

"You got it," He smiled as Cloud leaned down to otherwise kiss his face off. But mentioning his left hand caused Sephiroth's to pronounce its' usual ache from a combat-filled day. "... Can I maybe get a hand massage?"

Cloud smiled at the innocent request, happy to return a fraction of the comfort he'd been given that evening. He sat up on Sephiroth's hips and began diligently working his thumbs soothingly up and down his callused fingers, across his rough palm and over his wrist.

Sephiroth's long fingered hands were all bone, vein and sinew. It was rough, warm and capable; exactly what a SOLDIER's hand should look and feel like. It was somewhat of an honor to be so intimately trusted with a part of Sephiroth's body that he relied on to wield the most badass sword in combat history.

Then Cloud reasoned that if he could be trusted with Sephiroth's dick in his mouth, his sword hand should be no big deal. He smirked at Sephiroth, who was basking in his massage. The General was even wearing the same relaxed overbite he did when receiving oral sex.

Cloud supposed an innocent massage was much the same idea as something more erotic; it was a nagging bodily ache answered by a firm touch, producing pleasure. These things were best received from someone who really loved you, who cared about making you feel good without selfish intent.

With that tender thought, Cloud began to supplement the massage with kisses to Sephiroth's fingertips. "I love you."

"Mm-hmm," Sephiroth agreed dreamily.

Cloud's mouth twisted in thought. "... I still don't see why I'd get an infantry class. Why not something else?..."

Sephiroth made no reply, only laid under Cloud with a thoughtful expression. It was a farce; he wasn't listening to a word Cloud was saying.

"Seph?... I have an uncomfortable but necessary question for you. And really consider before you answer."

Sephiroth made an inquisitive hum as he continued to mindlessly enjoy his massage.

"The truth won't change anything right this minute, but I need to know," Cloud's voice had that dreadful waver to it that usually signaled a forecast of tears. He stopped massaging and clutched Sephiroth's hand to his chest. "We should both know..."

Now Cloud had his attention, "Christ. What?"

"Will you still want me to move in with you, even if I don't make it into... SOLDIER?" The last word fell apart as a fat tear rolled down Cloud's cheek. More followed and he hung his head slightly, knowing he was hideous when he cried, but unable to bear giving voice to the reality of an imminent break up.

"Cloud," Sephiroth scowled and took his hand back. He passed his thumbs under Cloud's eyes over and over, catching every tear with determination. "I'm in a relationship with you, not the outcome of your exam. You're not gonna lose me or let me down by not gettin' accepted. Stop this. Right now."

Cloud couldn't, and continued to weep against Sephiroth's hands. "You won't be a little bit ashamed? Living with an... an infantryman?"

"Will you get a grip?" Sephiroth held Cloud's head with both hands and kissed his forehead. "You'll make it, Cloud. I know it. Nobody in that whole fuckin' academy wants this more than you do, and I am not the only one who can see that. Besides, it's not like you're damned to infantry because you took one class. And it's not like infantry are scum either, those guys are important to me. There's over a hundred job titles in our army and they all start there."

"One hundred and twelve. But only one in all caps," Cloud remarked bitterly, wiping his own face.

Sephiroth wasn't sure how to respond to that. He thought for a moment, trying to choose his words with care. But as sensitively as he chose them, it came out harshly, "The only thing that could hold you back is this shitty attitude."

"I do not have a shitty attitude! Besides, there are lots of other random, uncontrollable factors that could keep me from SOLDIER!"

"Like what?" Sephiroth grunted doubtfully.

"What if I can't tolerate mako?"

Sephiroth then shocked him with a sudden kiss. He cupped Cloud's neck with both hands and took his entire mouth, overlapping Cloud's unspoken questions with wide undulations of his lips. It didn't end until Sephiroth finally allowed it dwindle into wet, tiny kitten kisses.

"... You like that?" Sephiroth asked. "The taste of me?"

"Love it," Cloud grinned somewhat shyly.

"... And the taste of the junk that comes outta me?"

Cloud's grin then expanded into one of the widest smiles Sephiroth had ever seen, but he seemed to be too smitten to respond verbally. Instead he bashfully nodded, bumping his nose into Sephiroth's.

"You can tolerate mako, case closed," He reached down to smack Cloud's ass definitively. "I think you might even be an addict, baby."

Cloud shied away from the slap with a squeal, but then immediately arched out just enough to leave himself defenseless for another. "Do you really have that much mako inside you? To like... expose me?"

"Little bit," Sephiroth smirked, his neon eyes moving back and forth slightly as they gazed into Cloud's, a warm and deep blue in the dark of the tank.

Cloud leaned down to take another kiss. "... Maybe what I need tonight is a fix."

"In my car?" Sephiroth grinned, stretching out beneath him.

"It won't be the first time..." One of Cloud's hands slid down, and he easily thumbed the button of Sephiroth's jeans open. "I'll take my medicine anywhere I can get it... as long as you're willing to give it to me."

"Medicine, huh? I thought you were supposed to be my nurse," Sephiroth chuckled, his thighs unconsciously parting in anticipation.

"Great nurses always work under a great doctor. We get sick too sometimes," Cloud's fingers teased down past the band of Sephiroth's boxer-briefs and brushed through trimmed pubic hair to cup him. His cock quickly stiffened against Cloud's palm. "... And I feel so sick right now, Doctor."

"You are sick..." Sephiroth agreed, combing Cloud's hair off of his blushing face. "You appear to have flu-like symptoms."

Cloud pouted, oozing false innocence while grinding his obvious arousal against Sephiroth's thigh. "Do you feel that?"

"Yeah, I do."

"It happens when you kiss me... When you're near me... Sometimes all I have to do is think about you," Cloud admitted with a concerned frown. "Do you have any idea why?"

"That is a long, hard problem..." Sephiroth drawled pensively, and Cloud would have laughed if it weren't for the mesmerizing lust glowing in his eyes. Sephiroth pushed the edge of his underwear down and tucked it beneath his balls. "Maybe try puttin' some of this in your mouth?"

Cloud scooted down, leaning comfortably across Sephiroth's lap and the backseat. Once he was settled he kissed Sephiroth's arousal, exhaling warm breath onto it. He smiled to himself as it involuntarily twitched in response, then innocently dragged his tongue over the tip. "Like this, doctor?"

"That's a great start," Sephiroth's eyes lidded as he melted against the seat. He patiently bided his time, letting Cloud slowly tease him with his wet tongue and the warm metal piercing in the center of it. Cloud's lips were soft and relaxed as they moved along the hardened ridges of his cock.

Only when Sephiroth let out a low, quiet groan did Cloud glance up at him. He met his lover's glowing eyes, his lips noisily suckling over the weeping tip. "I can taste my medicine already. You're the best doctor ever."

"Take more in and you'll get your... uh... medicine," Sephiroth chuckled at the ridiculousness of it all, but it was a distracted sound. He needed this far too much after what he'd been through that day, and the role-play shit felt somewhat like a huge middle finger to all of it. It was necessary.

Cloud giggled back as he flicked his outstretched tongue, "You know just how to make your nurse feel better."

Sephiroth's back arched off the seat slightly, and he tried to keep in character. "Uh huh. Now open wide and suck it."

Cloud stared up as he lapped at it again before taking it deep into his mouth. Sephiroth looked way too sexy to deny with his strong thighs spread wide. He loved this man, and it was okay to lust after him, to play games and give him something to crave. Cloud's innocent act faded as he worked his skill and relaxed his throat, taking that thick, wonderfully heavy cock all the way down.

He backed up with a wet slide, and ducked down a bit further to take one of his lover's big, smooth balls into his mouth. He moved his tongue over the perfect roundness, feeling it slip and slide under loose skin. He kissed it before giving the other one the same gentle, loving treatment. He then ran his tongue down further, poking a wet greeting against Sephiroth's hole, and flicking it enough to let him know it wasn't an accident.

It clenched tight in surprise, and Cloud moaned against it. He wanted Sephiroth so badly, every part of him. It almost made him wish he was two people, one to fuck him and one to get fucked by him. That delicious notion played out in his mind as he continued to lap Sephiroth's ass, while running a hand down over his own.

The tiny, impatient growls Sephiroth produced were like music. Cloud licked his way back up to the head of his cock and spoke around it, letting his lips slip against the slit. "Hey Doctor, won't the medicine get into my blood stream more quickly if inserted anally?"

Sephiroth barked out laughter, then bit his mouth against a wide smile, "I don't think we have the proper equipment for that procedure."

"Surely such a seasoned medical professional such as yourself knows how to improvise," Cloud told him breezily, before giving an especially wet pass down to the base of Sephiroth's cock. He sucked his way back up slowly, pausing at the tip to bob his head a little, giving it the hot, tireless suction that Cloud knew made Sephiroth's toes curl.

"You have school in the morning," Sephiroth whispered, as if keeping the out of character comment away from their medical flavored game. "How 'bout we keep it simple?"

"How 'bout we fuck?" Cloud answered cheekily, his fingers dragging longingly down Sephiroth's spread thighs. He felt himself blush at the masculine, demanding tone of his own voice, and quickly added with a meeker earnest, "... Make love to me?"

"If you're willin' to submit your body to a little bit of experimentation... I'm sure I can manage that," Sephiroth drawled with flirtatious humor lifting his volume.

Cloud leaned forward to lick at Sephiroth's lips, "I trust you."

"We'll need to get these pants off you," Sephiroth said judicially, sitting up and collecting Cloud into his lap. He kissed him with a lazy passion, while his hands fumbled with the task of getting Cloud's pants off.

There were few things more erotic than letting his boyfriend undress him. Cloud enjoyed the kiss and submitted to being disrobed at Sephiroth's pace, but as time stretched out he realized it was taking way too long. Cloud looked down with an impatient chirp of a noise, "What are you doing down there?"

"I really dig these jeans on you, but the damn zipper always..." Sephiroth muttered around the kiss, still working to tug the tiny, stubborn metal zipper down over the solid bulge Cloud was sporting. Sephiroth paused to rub his palm against it, which charged the atmosphere with frantic urgency. The zipper finally pulled loose, and they moaned together in relief.

Sephiroth only pulled the tight little jeans down to Cloud's thighs before dropping him down on the seat. He pushed Cloud's knees together and back, wolfishly savoring the sight of Cloud's stiff cock and tight balls peeking out from between his closed legs. "For a sick boy, you are so fuckin' sexy."

Cloud faked a cough. "Please doctor... make me feel better."

He sputtered out a real cough when his cock was suddenly engulfed in the heat of Sephiroth's mouth. He reached up to shove his jeans down and over his sneakers, and spread his legs out wide for Sephiroth to work. He lifted the hem of his hoodie up to reveal more skin, his hand absent mindedly running over his stomach and down to the fringe that framed Sephiroth's face.

He sucked Cloud while letting his fingers roam between the curve of those pretty ass cheeks. The taste of his skin was delicious enough to crave, and it got sweeter the further down he went. Sephiroth closed his eyes and listened to the throaty, purring moans Cloud emitted as he eased his mouth off of his cock with wet, slick kisses.

"How do you feel now?" Sephiroth asked, his green eyes glowing bright in the shadowed dark of the backseat.

"Ugh, worse than ever," Cloud groaned, his features pulled tight in helpless arousal.

"Tell me where it hurts, baby," Sephiroth teased, showing his teeth as he nibbled Cloud's inner thigh.

"Right here," Cloud's hands snaked down to his ass and dug into the firm flesh, pulling it apart and completely exposing his hole. It was uninhibited and shameless, and made Sephiroth catch his breath. "Will you kiss it better for me?"

Sephiroth laid several nibbling kisses across Cloud's ass before pushing his entire face against it. Cloud couldn't help but cry out as he watched the reverent way Sephiroth's tongue moved against him. The way his eyes fluttered and his head tilted made it appear that the General was savoring some great delicacy. His nose pressed against Cloud's balls and that familiar, wriggling warmth nudged inside.

Sephiroth pulled his mouth away and pushed his fingers in, causing Cloud's back to jerk up off the seat.

"I would have warned you of the pinch..." Sephiroth slid his fingers back and forth, working the tight opening. "But anticipation usually makes the pain worse."

"It doesn't hurt," Cloud sighed, his arms folding behind his head. "It feels nice..."

"How nice is this on a scale of one to ten?" Sephiroth asked as he began to work his fingers deeper, searching for that lovely pressure point.

"Six... Five..." Cloud bit his lip, his entire body lifting up into the touch. Sephiroth's little medical fetish was catchy, and Cloud could easily imagine himself as a patient who had struck the lottery of having a hot, slutty doctor. "... Six... Mmm eight... Oh!"

Sephiroth stopped when Cloud moaned and moved his fingertips in a small, knowing circle. "Oh? Does that mean zero?"

"Fuck... Ten," Cloud's tongue wet his lips as he watched Sephiroth's long fingers disappearing inside him. "Do you think you could put my medicine right there, doctor? ... Right on that spot?"

"Oh definitely," Sephiroth sighed through his nose heavily, his eyes roaming over Cloud as he pulled his fingers back. "Would you mind bending over? I wanna give that ass a shot from behind."

Cloud nodded eagerly and sat up. He wasn't sure where he was going, but followed Sephiroth's hands and wound up with both knees on the seat and his chest against the backrest. Sephiroth crawled up behind him, his hands moving up his outer thighs.

"... It's not strictly necessary to take off this garment, but would you mind?" Sephiroth asked against his ear as he inched Cloud's hoodie up.

"Whatever you think is best," Cloud smiled and pulled it over his head, flattered that Sephiroth wanted to see more of him. He knew what else his lover liked to see, and pressed his chest into the backrest to arch and lift as deeply as he could in the cramped space. "Better?"

Sephiroth affirmed that it was with a heavy smack against Cloud's upturned ass, before reaching behind his head to pull his own shirt off. Cloud watched over his shoulder as Sephiroth spit twice against his fingers and rubbed them over the head of his cock.

When he felt a warm touch against him, Cloud shivered in excitement, "Mm..."

Sephiroth then paused and held a cupped hand below Cloud's chin. "Could I have a saliva sample, please?"

Cloud had to force himself to stop giggling so he could work up some spit, but managed to get enough out for Sephiroth to work with.

"Chill," Sephiroth instructed with a warm hand cupping Cloud's neck, and he began to ease his way in.

There was that sharp stretching pain, but it was something Cloud had become used to. He focused on the fact that this was Sephiroth's body pushing inside his, his sex, his love. No amount of discomfort was worth telling him to stop, especially when so much pleasure would follow.

Cloud continued to breathe and relax despite how much it burned, especially as Sephiroth became a little wider towards the base. But making love with Sephiroth had trained him to crave a little bit of pain, and Cloud often needed it to get off. Not in a weird, masochistic sort of way... but it made the experience so much more complete when it left him aching.

The bare skin of Cloud's back and Sephiroth's chest met, and he was glad they'd shed their jackets. He felt Sephiroth's hard stomach, wide chest and the two little rough points of his nipples, rub against his back. He reached behind to grab Sephiroth's thigh, "... Wait a second."

"'Kay," He buried his face against Cloud's neck, "... This is gonna be a deep one."

Cloud understood they had very little room in the backseat of the tank. But he had a little bit of wiggle room, and was able to use it to move experimentally. "Deep is good. Just... go slow."

Sephiroth sucked gently on the curve of Cloud's shoulder "... You feel so good right now."

Cloud curled his hands around Sephiroth's wrists, holding him close. He felt kisses against the back of his neck, and the thrumming length of Sephiroth's cock buried all the way inside. He began to press even deeper, only backing up a fraction of an inch before sinking in all the way. It stole Cloud's breath over and over, only allowing him tiny bursts of air.

The thick base rolled gently with tiny, nuzzling motions of Sephiroth's hips. The head was buried too deep to jab Cloud's most intense point, instead the rigid mass massaged against it as more of an afterthought.

Eventually Cloud's teeth clenched in pleasurable frustration, "More, Seph. Harder."

One of Sephiroth's hands moved down Cloud's tight stomach and teased his cock with a brush of warm fingertips. It had been slightly deflated from the rough entry, but snapped back to attention under Sephiroth's calloused palm.

"Can't go much harder. If the tank starts bouncin' someone'll call the cops."

Cloud keened out an agonized giggle. "Unn... I just wish there was more room in here."

"I know baby," Sephiroth scooted back and pushed his flexibility to the limit, sacrificing any comfort in order to make more room. He was able to pull his hips far enough to create some friction.

Cloud stole a breath before letting out a booming moan. He arched on the seat, offering up an angle that sent Sephiroth's cock scraping along his favorite places inside.

"That's better, huh?" Sephiroth asked, and was surprised when Cloud turned his head to yank him into a fierce kiss.

"I like this..." He whispered, slipping his tongue messily past Sephiroth's parted lips. "This position. I fucking like it."

"Good," Sephiroth continued to push into Cloud from behind, and he purred in unspoken agreement. He loved the way Cloud's slender back fit against him, the way his shoulder blades dug into his chest, the way Cloud's slim calves and socked feet wrapped around his knees on the seat to trap him close. His hands, his hair, his cheeks, his nose, his eyelashes... there was no doubt in Sephiroth's mind that Cloud was made for him. Only him.

"Seph..." Cloud moaned, making beautiful noise as he was pressed between Sephiroth and the back seat. He cried out with every movement, rambling half formed thoughts. "Fuck me... give me... I want everything. Every fucking thing."

"Like what?" Sephiroth breathed into his ear, intrigued by Cloud's words but more distracted by the way he was wriggling his hips. He dug his fingers into to soft flesh and rolled with Cloud's movements, which were unconsciously in time with the beat from the tank's stereo.

"Everything," Cloud choked out, unable to elaborate any further.

"I'm yours, baby," He said, tightening his fingers into Cloud's hair to draw his face out of the seat. The expression he wore was the stuff wet dreams were made of, and Sephiroth stretched over his narrow back to kiss him. "You tell me what you want... I'll do anything for you."

"Can I fuck you?... Like this?" Cloud gasped with a slight hint of a smile on his open mouth. He had no intention of changing positions at that point in time, but it was fun to fantasize aloud and tease his lover's brain with suggestions.

"Yeah," Sephiroth whispered, and suddenly bore down on Cloud heavily, pinning him against the seat with enough iron force to knock the air out of him. The message was clear that Sephiroth would allow Cloud to top him, and in fact allowed him to survive moment to moment in this enclosed space.

Sephiroth might have been Cloud's bitch, but only because he was happy to live in servitude to the one he loved. But inside was an animal, a predator, a wired mix of every evil bit of DNA that his makers could find. He snarled as his mind began to really process what he'd done and seen that day, and expressed it through roughness towards Cloud's body.

Cloud looked back. The warm, blue eyed gaze Sephiroth's eyes were met with was pure trust. No amount of excessive force, no display of sharp teeth or physical dominance would ever make Cloud think twice about giving his body and heart to a monster.

Sephiroth's heart suddenly throbbed as though it was being ripped apart, "Fuck… I love you. I love you."

Cloud locked his fingers between Sephiroth's, "... I know."

The lack of room and the threat of being discovered by nosy civilian police suddenly didn't matter. The blip of raw emotion was gone and all that was left was heady, boyish passion.

Cloud was engrossed in sensation so mindless that he began to literally drool against the seat. Breathing wasn't an option, but he chose his final word, "Seph!"

Sephiroth punctuated his thrusts against Cloud, and his thighs burned with the effort to keep himself at the perfect angle. He nipped Cloud's cheek and mumbled, "Ready... for your... medicine?"

Cloud laughed breathlessly and nodded, surrendering himself to everything Sephiroth gave him. "Yeah..."

The fluttering sensation of Cloud's laughter from the inside made Sephiroth's spine crawl. He yanked Cloud's head upright to attack his lips and shoulder with his teeth.

"I'm..." Cloud groaned on the very last of his breath, and his spine bowed inwards as every nerve in his body was sent into shock.

There was a different feel to sex after a day of severe stress. The best part wasn't the pleasure or even the release, but the rushing wave of relief and relaxation afterwards. It was more permanent than the build up. He was so warm, so satiated, and full to the brim of the most wonderful man in the world.

Sephiroth was thoroughly lost in the moment and inching towards climax, working hard at it, nearly desperate for it. Cloud held himself tight, moving his hips and giving as much back as he could under his lover's weight, "Seph, please do it for me. You feel so good... I want it all. Please?"

"God... damn..." Sephiroth muttered, his arms tightening hard around his waist as he hid against Cloud's shoulder.

Cloud gasped as he felt Sephiroth's cock pulsing inside him. It slid slowly, nuzzling, giving him sticky kisses from the inside out.

They landed together somewhere between embarrassment and ecstasy. The stereo continued to play away, almost as a tether they could grip onto to be taken back to reality.

When Sephiroth finally lifted his head, he had to swallow several times to coat his dry throat. When he found the voice to speak he rumbled, "... Feel better?"

"... Better," Cloud sighed with a drowsy enthusiasm. "... Are you okay?"

"Wrecked. I'm glad I don't work in the mornin'," he kissed the side of Cloud's face and lifted his weight off of him, muscles popping and bones grinding. He was about to complain, but instead had to stifle a sudden moan as he felt another pulsing aftershock, leaving a long, milky string of semen that connected his cock to Cloud's opening. Even more thick fluid was bubbling down the back of Cloud's balls.

"Seph! Help!" Cloud chirped innocently, not realizing how tantalizing the view was. "Do we have napkins?"

Sephiroth tore his eyes away and searched through the fast food bags for napkins, and discovered that the drive thru had been stingy in that department, only giving him two to complete the job. He had to choose between wiping Cloud's sweet, come dribbling ass... or the heavy, sticky load that Cloud had spurted all over the leather seat of his precious vehicle.

Sephiroth begrudgedly chose to clean Cloud with the napkins. He used his own shirt to wipe off the seat and any stray fluid on Cloud. Ever the servant to his babies.

Once Cloud was wiped dry, he turned on his knee and collapsed against the seat. "... Seph? Are you really okay, you were kind of - "

"Not to sound like an asshole, but we only got like half an hour to get you back," Sephiroth said, handing Cloud back his discarded clothes.

"No cuddles?" Cloud grumbled, forgetting his concern as he went about shaking loose his inside-out jeans and yanking them on.

Sephiroth collected his own clothes. "We'll have some more time tomorrow. I'll take you home for a while after the park. I'm sure the cuddle quota's gonna be balanced out."

With a happy little noise, Cloud wrapped his arms around Sephiroth's bare waist in a long, greedy hug.

Poets describe epiphanies as a stroke of lightning, or an earthquake, or some roaring internal event. However, the one that Sephiroth experienced at that moment was nothing more than a sense of easy, cool clarity.

Sephiroth hoped Cloud didn't make it into SOLDIER.

He'd been struggling with this feeling, warding it off in favor of being proud of Cloud, of listening to and supporting his wishes. But Sephiroth had his own wish, and formed in his mind against his will but it was there and it was the truth.

He wanted Cloud in the army. But as a pilot, as dispatch, an infantry sergeant, an instructor, a desk jockey. Anything at all but a SOLDIER.

For Sephiroth, a life of service to the Shin-Ra army was freedom. He loved SOLDIER. But he loved Cloud so much more, and couldn't imagine why he would choose this life when there were an infinite number of other options.

"You having deep thoughts up there?" Cloud murmured.

"... Just thinkin' how goofy you'll look next year in a Third Class uniform."

Cloud grinned. "You'll get used to it!"

"Yeah," Sephiroth agreed. "I'll have to."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A/N

1\. I recently uploaded this story called 'The Best Memories' about how shitty Cloud's life would turn out if things ended canonly, and a bunch of people asked me if that was how BA was going to end, or some sort of foreshadowing. Why would you think I would post the end of a story before the story is even over? Gimme a fucking break. I already said that BA is a happy story, so take some Oxycontin and relax! Why are you guys so high strung lately? Is it because I haven't updated this summer? I'm sorry!

2\. Updates take forever, I know. I guess if I posted shorter chapters it might make for more numerous postings, but I feel more comfortable with longer chapters. And it takes a long time for me to write – especially since I haven't had a laptop since like June. This entire chapter, start to finish was written on my iPhone. That is love, so don't ever doubt my appreciation and dedication to you.

3\. There's still no art up from this chapter or the last one due to my technical issues. I should be getting a new computer this month sometime, so I'll have things up then. I have put up art from the school lab recently, but I don't really feel comfortable working on 'romantic' art at school. Doing art in public is murky business, but I need sanctuary to make porn. But once I get up and running I'll have lots of fun things for you to look at. Art is kind of my way to thank reviewers, and I feel real shitty that I don't have a gift. It's like you coming into my house but I don't have any booze or hookers to offer you. Soon!


	28. Cunt Cells

"How have you been feeling?" Dr. Hojo asked.

"Fine," Sephiroth answered.

"You're going up North again. Do you need an immune system enhancement?"

"Fuck that. That's your code for makin' me sick on purpose with some crazy bullshit. Don't you dare..." Sephiroth said, doing his best to sound grown up and important, despite the fact that he was naked under a thin paper gown and his feet weren't touching the floor.

"I'll do whatever I dare, Sephiroth," Hojo said breezily.

"Can you just spare me this time?" he finally implored, swallowing his pride and attempting to charm the old man with a somber, innocent, large eyed gaze. Threatening Hojo never worked, so cuteness was worth a shot. "I don't have time to be sick this week. Seriously."

"I don't have any immunity tests prepared at the moment anyway..." Hojo rubbed his chin as he looked over the page on his clipboard, and lifted it to check over another. "Your levels all look stable, so that'll shorten this visit. But I'd like to get another opinion on something before I let you leave. Will you wait here for ten minutes while I collect the necessary data?"

Sephiroth leaned back on his palms impatiently. "I guess I can do ten minutes."

Hojo pushed his glasses up with a distinct air of disappointment. "I can't even stand to listen to you speak. Doctors, shall we?"

And with that, the small team shuffled out the door and pulled it shut behind them.

When he was finally alone Sephiroth sat up straight, tugging on the ill fitting gown which tore a little around his biceps. He looked all around the bland, spotless examination room for something of interest to occupy his attention... and there was one thing that had been distracting him since the moment he'd arrived.

A jug of water sat upon the counter beside a very small paper cup. It was strange and out of place, as there was no cup dispenser by the sink. It had been set there purposely by someone.

Sephiroth wasn't thirsty... but then again, he kind of was. It was suspicious, but the more he thought about the contents of the jug, the more he wanted to taste it. It looked rather inviting.

Sephiroth slid off of the table to his feet and went to the counter. He poured himself a cup of water and tossed it back, scowling at the taste. It was stale, obviously from some tap in the lab. It wasn't even cold.

... But for some reason, he felt compelled to drink another cup. He licked his lips after he was done, meaning to set it back the way it was so it wouldn't appear that he'd helped himself to somebody else's refreshment. But he didn't feel finished, yet.

He poured another cup and drank it all with another scowl; it was almost as rough to swallow as whiskey. But he forced down another cup, and then another.

Halfway through his fifth cup of water, his thirst was very suddenly quenched. He gladly emptied the remainder of the nasty, warm tap water back into the jug, set the little cup back exactly where it had been, and scooted back up onto the counter.

Moments later the doctors returned, and Sephiroth felt a thrill of victory at not being caught with his ass bare. But the inner rejoicing was short lived when Hojo sat down and began writing.

"Why did you take the water?"

Sephiroth sighed. "Sorry."

"Why did you take the water?" Hojo repeated.

"I was thirsty...?"

"Were you?"

"I was bored," Sephiroth admitted.

"You were not thirsty, yet you took water without permission... from a lab that routinely poisons you. Even after violently objecting to an immunity test, you took the risk of taking that particular water, even when faced with the poor quality and taste." Hojo was looking out into empty air like he was a poet. "Did it occur to you that that might not be water for drinking?"

"Well, what the fuck was the little cup there for?" Sephiroth asked.

"Very good point. So you deduced that the cup was there for someone's use, and decided to be the one to use it because you were bored. Am I right?" Hojo looked up from his writing, waiting for a response.

Sephiroth had a sinking feeling. "Please tell me that was water."

"It was ordinary water," Hojo affirmed. "And you drank exactly four and a half cups. Why that amount?"

"I dunno," Sephiroth positively hated this type of interrogation. He never felt like he gave the right answers - the right answers being the ones that would get him out of there quickly.

"Perhaps you were satisfied with the amount?" Another doctor suggested.

"Don't lead him," Hojo snapped.

"... What was in the fuckin' water?" Sephiroth asked, his lids low and eyebrows high with feigned boredom.

"What happened in the middle of the fifth cup of water?" Hojo asked.

"I was done. I didn't wanna drink anymore," Sephiroth nervously rubbed the back of his neck. "I really need to go soon, I'm tired. I been trainin' new guys on fire casting all day and I have to get up at like four to catch the airship - "

"Soon," Hojo interrupted dismissively. "Sephiroth, if I were to offer you more of the water, would you accept it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because now I'm creeped out about it!" Sephiroth cried with a touch of mirth, making a couple of the more laid back doctors chuckle. At least some of the tension in the room was lifted.

Hojo brought the vibe right back down, "Have you heard any voices lately?"

"No," Sephiroth answered sharply.

"Have you felt any, what you have described before as being... 'creepy ghost hands'?" Hojo then asked, using Sephiroth's vernacular with dry disdain.

"You'd be the first to hear about it if I did."

"Have you felt any desire to merge with Jenova?"

"I've only felt the desire to merge with my boyfriend," Sephiroth smiled. This time, most of the doctors laughed.

It came as no surprise that Hojo remained unamused. "Please focus on answering the questions. The sooner you answer, the sooner you can leave, and the sooner I don't have to listen to your voice."

"I have no desire to have anything to do with Jenova," Sephiroth stated in his most clinical General voice.

Hojo did smile at that, and it was strange looking enough to cause the entire room to pause. "You say you have no desire to merge with Jenova. None at all?"

"None at all," Sephiroth agreed.

"Then please General, explain why - if you have no desire to merge with Jenova - did you gulp down lukewarm tap water until you consumed the Jenova cell I placed in there?"

Sephiroth ran that sentence over in his mind several times before answering, and each time his face fell a few more centimeters. "... Gross!"

"Gross," Hojo repeated with another odd looking smile. "You child. It was only one cell."

"Well what kind?" he asked, his face tight with disgust.

"Uterine," Hojo answered. "The mother honing cells are the most strongly concentrated there."

Sephiroth was outraged. "That is so fuckin' nasty! Don't do shit like that to me!"

This time Hojo laughed with the rest of the doctors, but it was more of an indignant scoff. "Do you know how many Jenova cells you have inside you? You're mostly her."

"So, I drank a stupid cell. That doesn't mean anything," Sephiroth said casually, despite a desire to vomit.

"Despite your stubborn personality assimilation with Vincent Valentine, it means you can still be influenced. And that means more to me than anything," Hojo said, almost to himself. "You don't even know why you do half the things that you do. You mirror human activity, emotion, and language, but you're faking it."

"... Don't you? Doesn't everybody?" Sephiroth asked. "We all learned how to be human from watching each other."

"You're better than human, though," Hojo said.

Sephiroth tilted his head, blatantly giving his doctor a scathing look he usually reserved for mouthy third class SOLDIERs. "... You said ten minutes. It's been twenty. Are we done?"

Hojo waved with his clipboard. "I'm very pleased. You may go."

Sephiroth shed the paper gown in front of the doctors and pulled on his pants. He was still shrugging into his coat as he left, trying not to show much of his anger because it would just be one more thing for them to inquire about.

It was true that he wasn't human... but he knew how to love, hate, and enjoy his life just as much as any human. It bothered him as a child, but he was too old to brood about it anymore. He couldn't change anything. It's not like there was an alternative to what he was.

Before he could think too much about any of this, he dialed up Genesis, who was contractually obligated to answer his calls. On the second ring, he picked up. "This better be urgent."

"Hey, two minutes. I just got done with a lab visit. Gimme a reality check."

Genesis heaved a very dramatic sigh. He and Angeal were probably the only people on the planet that were as enhanced as he was, and they were all aware of each other's occasional need to be verbally told how flawed they were.

"Get over yourself," Genesis told him. "You're messy, you're mean, and I've seen you eat your own boogers. You have no appreciation for fine literature, and you're constantly on your phone texting your equally obnoxious boyfriend. If you weren't so hot, I myself would have killed you by now."

Sephiroth let that sink in. "... I don't text that much."

"In meetings you do."

"In meetings yeah," Sephiroth snorted. "Alright, I'm better now. Thanks."

"So... What happened?"

"I drank a uterus cell from Jenova."

"... Gross!"

"On purpose," Sephiroth ventured to admit. "Subconsciously."

"What's the matter with you?" Genesis tsked.

"I dunno."

"So now what? Are you pregnant?" Genesis laughed.

"I hope not. I guess that just means I can hone in on her cunt cells or something, I dunno. Just creeps me out."

"Well beautiful, go home and take a nice, hot shower. No, wait... a bubble bath. Yeah, get bubbles all over yourself. Soap everything up into a nice, thick lather - "

"I'm done with this conversation, now."

"Oh, come on! Lighten up and say something inappropriate to me! It's not cheating if you're just talking!" Genesis cried. "You owe me a favor for the reality check!"

"... I should have called Angeal."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Airship rides weren't so bad in Sephiroth's opinion, but the lack of leg room was awfully shitty. He could sit on the couch at home for a whole weekend watching movies, and be perfectly content to not move an inch. But something about the fact that he couldn't get up and walk around on an airship made his ass fall asleep, his legs ache, and his back complain. Even in first class, his knees dug into the seat in front of him, and it was almost unbearable if the person decided to lean back.

Cloud really didn't appreciate how lucky he was to have such a compact body. He could tuck himself into small places, fit into any kind of clothing, and ride around on people's backs if he didn't feel like walking. Being small had a multitude of advantages.

Sephiroth didn't dwell too much on his discomfort though. Airships were still cool because liked getting those little cups of soda and snacks from friendly flight attendants. He also liked getting a chance to watch movies he never would have thought to check out otherwise. Most of all he liked looking out the window; the Earth looked pretty from high altitudes.

But the difference in this particular airship ride was that he would be sitting next to Vincent Valentine for the duration. These days they always stopped to chit chat or greet each other in the hallways at headquarters, but they'd never actually followed through on any plans they'd made. Either Vincent was busy or Sephiroth was; it was hard trying to find free time to spend with Vincent that he wouldn't rather be spending with Cloud.

But this mission together to the Northern Crater was an excuse to finally have a decent conversation. So Sephiroth made a stop at Lazard's office to request a seat next to Vincent on the flight.

"Don't you want the seat next to you to be unoccupied? You usually prefer it so you can sit sideways," Lazard had frowned. He liked keeping SOLDIERs and Turks separate, because when the two groups got together for long periods of time they usually began comparing pay, benefits, and time off. The last thing Lazard needed was a Union up his ass, especially a Union formed by the strongest and the sneakiest people on the planet.

"Valentine and I have history. We wanted to take some time to catch up." Sephiroth reasoned that he had nothing to hide. Lazard probably knew more about their family situation than anyone else outside of the labs.

Something about Lazard seemed greasy and cheap, which was surprisingly easy to pull off when you were a billionaire. He was a bastard child, and he didn't quite know how to outwardly reflect the endless amount of money in his bank account. He had become a caricature of bad taste, and Sephiroth could only imagine how tacky his home must be. Like red carpets and gold wallpaper kind of tacky.

But despite his poor fashion sense, his drug problems, and the fact that he'd fucked his own little brother, Lazard was a fairly nice guy. "In that case, I have nothing against you and Valentine being seatmates."

"Thanks. But can you make sure we get the first row? I don't wanna knee-fuck the person in front of me."

Lazard laughed openly, another characteristic that differentiated himself from his socially reserved family. "I always try to do my best for you, Sephiroth."

Sephiroth arrived that morning in the more airship-friendly SOLDIER First Class uniform and his hair tied up in a cascading, messy bun. Anything at all to fend off the airship cramps, and he had to admit he had always felt so fucking cute in the uniform. Even more so now that Shin-Ra was accustomed to him in a more intimidating leather outfit; when people saw him wearing anything else he tended to get a lot of lingering smiles.

It was a challenge not to prance, but Sephiroth fought the urge... mostly.

He found Vincent at the airship gate, long legs stretched out and a newspaper in his hands. His suit was a little neater than usual, probably due to the early hour and the fact that he hadn't had to kill anyone yet that day.

Sephiroth went to sit beside him with no change to his gait or his posture, but suddenly felt four feet shorter. It felt especially true with a knapsack slung over his shoulder, making it oddly reminiscent of a night spent at Vincent's apartment as a child. He approached him with a sense of that child-like excitement, not the angry dread that he'd felt working in the same building with him all these years.

Vincent didn't look up from the paper when Sephiroth sat down, but elbowed him gently, "Mornin'."

"Hey," Sephiroth greeted with a sigh through his nose, and leaned back against his seat. It was a full airship that morning; contractors, investors, supervisors and crew were constantly moving to and from the Northern Crater now that it was a permanent Shin-Ra base.

"Why are we here," Vincent mumbled, but it didn't exactly come out as a question. His eyes then shot to Sephiroth, and he pointed to his paper. "Five billion gil, Seph. That's what they're sayin' this is costin' Shin-Ra, but you know it's gonna be closer to ten. If I handed you ten billion gil right now, would you spend it puttin' a high tech base right in the middle of the fuckin' North Pole?"

"Nah."

"What would you do with it?"

"What are my options?"

"You gotta invest back into the company. If the President handed you ten billion gil, what would you do with it?"

Sephiroth started with the issue closest to home, "Twenty million to expand the Academy, and increase the trainin' program to four years instead of three. Fifty million to test and reinforce the Junon base, especially the smaller cannons which prove to be unreliable. I could probably spend a whole billion on weapons and testin', cleaner ammunition and - "

"No Seph, you're too sensible to handle any kinda real money. You'd get way too much shit done, and that's not the point."

"What is the point?"

"It's not to make what we already got better, it's to take over even more. Shin-Ra's set on takin' over the whole world."

"Hasn't he already?" Sephiroth chuckled, and it was slightly smug considering that the terrifying image he'd presented during the most recent war had helped tremendously in that regard.

"Not even close. But pullin' this Northern Crater shit?... Man. Ten billion gil, Seph. He's got that to burn, buildin' the most kickass base we've ever had. You know how many men are anticipated to take residency at this base?"

Sephiroth should have known this information, but actually didn't. He confidently fudged a reasonable sounding number, "Five thousand."

"Two hundred."

"What?"

"And they'll be older vets, guys on light duty, or greenies. Total waste of money." Vincent closed the paper and slapped it against Sephiroth's chest. "I'm gonna get some coffee. They said one of the flight attendants is late, we gotta wait for a replacement. You want a cup?"

"Sure," Sephiroth nodded, opening the paper without any real interest in its contents. He couldn't read it without his glasses anyways, and he didn't feel like finding them in his duffle bag.

"What kind do you drink?"

"No sweet shit, just nasty and hot."

"Good," Vincent gave him a scrutinizing, yet approving scowl. "A man's drink."

"And one of those big chocolate chip cookies," Sephiroth amended.

"Go fuck yourself."

Sephiroth gave a lukewarm smile to a few of the pencil pushers he knew from the Academy, and pretended to read Vincent's paper. He held it at arm's length and squinted a little so he could make out the pictures that had been printed of the new Northern Crater base plan. It looked impressive, but even before hearing Vincent's input he'd found the entire thing exhaustive and unnecessary.

Vincent returned with their coffee, and with one of the cookies that Sephiroth had facetiously requested. He almost turned it down, but the gesture was nice and he had never met a cookie that he didn't like. He gratefully consumed the treat and sipped at his hot coffee.

They sat beside each other for a long while, every so often pausing to throw a glance at each other. Sephiroth retied his boot laces, Vincent combed his hair with his fingers. Sephiroth exhaustively checked his phone for personal messages, and Vincent tapped his fingers against his polished loafer.

"So tell me about..." Vincent began, but ended up making a vague rolling gesture with his hand. "... All of it."

Sephiroth knew exactly what Vincent meant by 'it'. 'It' was life, the time they'd missed, the mundane in's and out's of existence. There was a lot of 'it' that Vincent had missed.

His eyes dropped over Sephiroth's form, easily seeing the child's body hidden inside the lean mass it had become. All the protein and physical training in the world couldn't change the tiny details of Sephiroth that were the same since he was a baby - the shape of his fingernails, the slope of his nose, and the unusual arrangement of his features.

"All of it," Sephiroth repeated, flashing a smile of disbelief and fatigue. "Well... the day I graduated I moved out on my own, and I'm still livin' out over near the West edge. Uhh... I was a trainin' Sergeant for half a year, then I went to Wutai to patrol and move troops for a year, and then I came back and got promoted to Lieutenant for what felt like five seconds before I was like... thrust into the runnin' for General, and was basically kissin' every single ass in Shin-Ra for another year until I got the promotion."

"I remember that," Vincent laughed. "You got pretty."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes, "Might as well have been a fuckin' beauty pageant, I had a team of people coachin' me on how to speak and how to act... I never thought in a million years the old guy would pick me, Vince. I still don't believe it sometimes... but I guess the President an' Hojo set it all up that way, huh?"

"No, Seph. The old General might have been a fuckin' corpse when he finally gave up that position, but he never once let the President push him around. He retired because he was dyin'. He'd still be a General today if he wasn't sick. Prolly one of the reasons why the Prez set you up with the glam squad, makin' sure you were the easiest choice for him to make," Vincent took a long drink of his coffee, since it had cooled off enough to enjoy. "Oldie liked you because you weren't a ladder climber like the other candidates. You have naturally heroic instincts - "

"Stop," Sephiroth groaned softly, very close to turning red.

"Seph, I know all about you. I won't embarrass you, but lemme tell you that you save lives everywhere you go. Some leaders - some leaders you work with right now - they pass those kind of life-saving opportunities up just because they can. You really care about bringin' everyone home, and not many men in your position do. You're pretty new at it, so who knows what your policy may be in a few years... but SOLDIERs feel safe with you."

"It's just a game to me," Sephiroth said dismissively. "I see the number brought, and I like to keep it close to the number retrieved. Less paperwork, less work, less mess."

Vincent allowed Sephiroth his humbleness and said nothing more.

"So what about you?" Sephiroth changed the subject. "What have you been doin'?"

"I work."

"There's gotta be more than that," Sephiroth laughed.

"There's never been much more than that," Vincent said, pushing himself up out of his seat. The final flight attendant came rushing towards the gate, all apologies. The airship quickly boarded and before long they found themselves climbing altitude.

"Tell me about this boy you've got," Vincent asked after they'd settled in. They'd gotten the first row seat and they were both using every inch of space to stretch their identical, long legs out in front of themselves.

Sephiroth's nose wrinkled a little. "Why?"

"Don't act embarrassed," Vincent said dryly. He would never tell Sephiroth about catching him making out with Cloud in the slums, because there would be no comedic point. That day Vincent had been angry and disgusted at the display, but after meeting Cloud and seeing the two interact with each other, instead of just slobbering all over each other... He could accept that there was some value to it.

"You know all there is to know," Sephiroth claimed. "We're datin'..."

"Do you two..." Vincent showed the palms of his hands in an innocent display of confusion. He'd never been one to speak eloquently, and just blurted out what he was wondering : "Do you do actual gay shit? Like fuck each other and stuff?"

Sephiroth's eyes went wide, the skinny slit iris going even more narrow. "... Of course."

"Really?" Vincent asked in amazement, shaking his head a little. "Wow. Really? How?"

Sephiroth bit the inside of his cheek, "... How what?"

"Not how, but I mean... What exactly..." Vincent grasped for words. "How... How are you like that? When did you decide to be like that?"

"Like what?" Sephiroth asked with a dark curl of his features. "Just say 'gay', Vincent."

"I just don't see it, Seph," Vincent finally confessed. "I mean, I can usually see that shit a mile away. I really don't see it in you, not even after findin' out you were... like that. Gay."

Sephiroth frowned, "Just 'cause I don't act like some stereotypical faggot from a TV show doesn't mean I'm pretendin' to be somethin' I'm not."

"Oh get over yourself," Vincent reached over to push Sephiroth's shoulder. "I'm not tryin' to insult ya. But Cloud? Oh yeah, I'd definitely know he was gay. Might as well cut it off and be a chick."

"He's a man, Vincent. Trust me, he's a man," Sephiroth quickly defended, not wanting Vincent to accept his sexuality because it wasn't obvious, but look down on Cloud for being less able to hide it. It was just who Cloud was.

"Yeah, he's manly," Vincent huffed doubtfully.

"I know he's a little bit short and... kind of a queen sometimes," Sephiroth shrugged a shoulder. "But there's more to him than you think."

"Do you let him fuck you up the ass?"

Another wide eyed, cat-like expression popped onto Sephiroth face, "... That's a horrifyin' question."

Vincent gave him a petulant look, "I've changed your diapers. Just answer it or I'll die wonderin'."

"Yes!" Sephiroth admitted exhaustively, letting the cat out of the bag because he figured it would probably keep coming up over and over if he didn't. Vincent wasn't the only person who'd probed into his bedroom preferences, and he didn't know why it was so hard for people to believe. Who wouldn't want to get fucked by Cloud Strife?

"But there are so many good lookin' girls around... why would you wanna be with another guy?" Vincent asked, looking at Sephiroth like a rare spectacle. He then repeated with a whisper of incredulity, "And in your ass? Jesus Christ!"

"You ever do anal with a chick?"

On the other side of the question, Vincent found himself struggling to answer. "I fuck girls up the ass, sure."

"Why would you do that with so many good lookin' boys around?"

There was a fraction of a second that Vincent's expression slipped into a horrified balk, and Sephiroth began to bark on laughter. Vincent tore a magazine from a pocket beside Sephiroth's seat and smacked him in the face with it. Someone must have complained about the noise, because a passing flight attendant gave them a tsk until they obediently quieted down.

Sephiroth spoke on a hushed tone. "I don't know how to make you understand it, but I'm totally happy. Way happier than ever before."

"You just don't act gay," Vincent shrugged. "You never did."

"I guess parents don't usually see that kinda stuff in their kids."

Vincent let that thought sink in, before he rested his head against his seat. "... I wouldn't call me droppin' in now and then bein' any kind of parent to you."

Sephiroth laughed at that, feeling more comfortable now that the subject wasn't his ass and what occasionally went into it. "You might not have come that often, but I remember you the most. Everything else about growin' up seemed... like background noise. I always looked forward to seein' you."

Vincent didn't say anything, but stared out of the window at the ground far below.

The words felt heavy in the air, so Sephiroth quickly cleared them away with chatter, "Sorry if that was weird. I know I'm a grown man, now. I prob'ly shouldn't say shit like that."

"You look about six-years-old to me, so it doesn't really matter what you say, Seph," Vincent finally looked away from the window. "When we sat down I almost wanted to ask you if you needed help with your seat buckle."

Sephiroth smiled, excited and eager for another topic to talk to Vincent about, just to hear his answers, "So, you got a girlfriend?"

"I got some friends that are girls. Women, I guess is a better term for them..." Vincent seemed bored by the subject.

Sephiroth's eyebrows lifted a little. "How many?"

"Enough to get by," Vincent said with an edge of finality. "You ever had a girl?"

"Yeah," Sephiroth smiled shyly, unable to contain a small sigh of dread. "Well, I dated girls before Cloud. You never saw a worse ladies' man than me."

"I find that hard to believe. You're way too pretty not to have some luck, even if you didn't say a word to 'em."

Sephiroth took the compliment for what is was worth, but cheekily dug into Vincent's dirty laundry, "Maybe I shoulda gone after some older cougar like you did with my mom, I mighta done better."

Vincent tilted his head in thought. "Now that you mention it, I could never talk to chicks my own age, either. Maybe that's why your mom was into me. It is easier to talk to older women."

Sephiroth licked the side of his mouth with a sniffle of humor. "So if you're still going after older women... they in their sixties?"

"Listen, friend," Vincent said, straightening up in his seat and patting down the wrinkled front of his suit. "Time travels in a straight line, so take a good look at your future. You'll be pushin' fourty someday, too."

"You're fourty-one."

"You're a shithead," Vincent grumbled. "You got a taller but nothin's changed, you're still a little piece of shit."

"I have a serious question," Sephiroth said, giving himself a pause to get the words together. "... Was there ever like... a paternity test?"

"You'd know better than I would. I'm sure your mom knew, but she never told me for sure. I'm sure the lab knows. Nobody ever said nothin' to me, though..." Vincent paused to accept a soda from the flight attendant.

Sephiroth asked her for coffee, and when her attention had moved elsewhere he leaned closer. "I never asked, because it seemed like it didn't matter. I kinda don't wanna know, because if it turned out that you weren't - "

Vincent interrupted. "I'm sorry I left you."

"... It's okay."

"No. You were right. I shouldn't have even left you once."

"... It's okay now," Sephiroth amended.

"You were a funny kid," Vincent smiled, taking a long drink of his soda. "I tried to come every Saturday to see you. We'd go to the park, or the movies, or my apartment. Just to get you outta there for a couple hours. I was busy with work, so I missed a lot of Saturdays... I tried to make 'em up though. When you were about four-years-old I missed a Saturday with you, so I came on the followin' Monday. Then I was free that weekend, so I came again on Saturday like usual. When I showed up, you gave me one of those huge, shark tooth smiles and just ran to me. I picked you up, and you hugged me and said, 'I didn't think you'd wanna come here again this week.'

"I think the only time my heart ever broke harder is when your mom passed," Vincent finally stopped talking, and stared mournfully into empty space. He was seeing something behind his eyes that was private and indescribable.

"... Did you think I died? Her baby, I mean," Sephiroth asked carefully.

Vincent blinked away whatever vision had been consuming him, and nodded, "Oh yeah. The day she went into labor, she called me. She said that as soon as the baby was there and she'd rested a little, she'd call me back. I waited all that day, but I didn't wanna blow up her phone with calls... your mom was really somethin', she always complained I was too needy when I called her, but then said I was a bastard if I didn't. So I just waited... and finally her mom called and told me the bad news."

"Her mom?" Sephiroth asked. "I have a grandma?"

"Oh," Vincent stopped short. He wasn't sure if Sephiroth knew who his grandmother was, and didn't know how to tell him. "... You know Dr. Crescent? That old broad with the big glasses? She's Lucy's mom... your mom's mom."

Sephiroth's eyes went wide when he finally put it together. His face fell into a gawk for a moment, until he slowly collected himself. "... She was... She never even acted like she..."

"The women in that family are pretty damn cold," Vincent agreed.

Sephiroth still seemed disturbed by this development, but returned to the original subject. "So you just figured her kid died, too?"

Vincent nodded, "Pretty much. Her desk in the lab was already gone the next time I went down there, and you know how comforting that crew can be to a grieving man. They basically said I had no business down there anymore and to get the fuck out. I didn't go down again until after I met you."

Sephiroth stared down at the blue carpet under his feet, seeing little imperfections where it frayed near the metal wall of the airship. "... And you met me when I was two?"

"You weren't even two, yet. You were toddlin' around headquarters, causin' trouble as usual. I just happened to come across you... it was unmistakable, no question. You have your mom's... everything."

"... You think I look like her?" Sephiroth asked, his throat constricting hard for reasons that were unclear to him. His mother was an awful woman, that much was true. But he respected Vincent's opinion far more than Professor Hojo's, and he'd much rather resemble Vincent's cruel former lover than a monstrous extraterrestrial mess of misshapen body parts and tentacles.

"You do look like her," Vincent said, his eyes moving over the lines of Sephiroth's face. "There's one difference, though..."

After a pause, Sephiroth finally asked, "... What?"

"You're much prettier than she was."

Vincent was only kidding, but watching that familiar, sharp-toothed smile develop on Sephiroth's features, he had to admit that it was kind of true. Lucrecia had been pretty, but their son was beautiful.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud had never really had friends before in his entire life, so nobody thought to mention to him that he didn't have to go along with every single thing they wanted to do. His drive to please everyone around him, plus his cute looks had catapulted him into something resembling popularity at the Shin-Ra Military Academy. Or as popular as a boy who was 5'4", openly gay, and wore skinny jeans could become, but at least he didn't take teasing personally anymore.

It's not as though he had fallen in with a bad crowd; if anything his group of friends were extremely driven in their goals to reach the SOLDIER exam. Simply keeping up with them in the hallway was a challenge for Cloud's shorter legs, and constantly cramming for tests and pumping iron left Cloud feeling a little lost in his own life.

He needed a break. He got them often enough with Sephiroth, especially now that he was stationed in the city for the time being. Love made them equals at home, but there was no denying that Sephiroth had every ounce of power in their professional relationship with rank, size, intellect and experience. Even on weekends, Cloud found himself trailing after Sephiroth through Midgar Park on one of the General's grueling runs. It was good for both of them, plus he liked to watch Sephiroth's ass in sweatpants.

Cloud found the perfect sanctuary from the Shin-Ra life as a cashier at Dirty Rubbers. He was working his very first Wednesday evening shift, and had already fallen in love with it. Here, he wasn't short, or too loud, or just another skinny Cadet trying to weasel into SOLDIER.

In the civilian world, with his cute face, unusual hair and his emerging rack of abdominal muscles, Cloud might as well have been a teenage Adonis. It was wonderful.

It was quite an easy job, as the customers were relaxed, the merchandise was fun to look at, and he had the opportunity to play his own music at obnoxious volumes. The rest of the staff was right down the street at the local quiz bar, where they were enjoying a night out of the store. He could see how it would became dull as an everyday job, but for a Cadet in the Shin-Ra army getting paid to fold clothes was paradise.

Gus also made it clear that a part of his job was to wear and sell the merchandise. Before he'd left, he'd made sure that Cloud changed into a tiny jockstrap, thigh highs and some cleats.

At the Academy he was considered scrawny, but here Cloud was getting the most raunchy sexual attention he'd ever gotten in his life. Three teenage girls had giggled and asked him to pose for a cell phone picture with them, in which he received three lip gloss-sticky kisses on his cheeks. The same high brow businessman had walked past the store at least fifty times, staring a hole into Cloud's underwear. And actual good looking gay men were paying attention to him... not the noisy Academy sort of gay, but the well-dressed, educated and hunky sort. The kind who had tiny dogs and were bartenders and could actually grow facial hair.

But it got a little weird when a woman his mother's age had hung around for nearly twenty minutes, grilling him about the strength of his sexual orientation. And a few of the customers though that it would be acceptable to grab onto whatever part of his body was available for grabbing. It was funny that most of the handsy people were straight guys with their girlfriends.

Being an irresistible hunk was quite a hassle!

Ego inflated, Cloud got back to work cleaning the store. He thoroughly swept beneath the thick shelves on the back wall, finding a decade's worth of crap lingering there. It seemed the other workers at Dirty Rubbers decided to use that area as the perfect place to hide debris, dust, and garbage instead of sweeping it into a dustpan.

As Cloud was bent over and moodily sweeping out the mess, he was tempted to ignore a slow whistle coming from the end of the aisle - he was sure that his butthole was probably on display. He quickly sat up on his knees and glanced over his shoulder, "Do you need help finding anyth - "

Aerith stood there in a pink track suit, looking perfectly innocent with a demure smile on her doll-like face. "... Hey Cloud, have you ever had that dream where you go to work but forget to put on your clothes?"

Cloud spun around to face her, and tried to hide behind the broom he was holding. Twenty pounds ago, that might have actually been effective. As it was, it was like trying to censor a statue with a fig leaf; it only accentuated the fact that he was practically stark naked in front of a loathed enemy.

But even if he was without clothing, he was still furious. "If I had a gun, I would blow your head off."

"... Excuse me?" She blinked, her friendly expression going blank with shock.

"I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but Sephiroth was right all along. You're a fucking cunt, and if you ever bother Zack again, I'm going to..." Cloud trailed off as Zack appeared in the aisle, carrying some sort of lacy garment.

"Hey Aer, check out this..." His eyes went wide when he saw Cloud, and barking laughter escaped. "Cloud, who took your clothes? Did you get mugged or something?"

"No! I work here now! This is my uniform!" Cloud spat out, wilting a little bit. "What the fuck are you doing here with her?"

Zack seemed at a loss for what to say. "Well... just hanging out."

"Does Sephiroth know about this?" Cloud cried.

"Zack doesn't need Sephiroth's permission to see me," Aerith stated. "We're working things out, and it's our business and nobody else's."

"Yeah? Well dream on period face, because everyone knows what you did and everyone hates you for it!" Cloud sneered petulantly.

"I'm sure I have some friends who hate Zack as much as you seem to hate me, now. I thought you might be on my side, but I guess not!"

"Why would I be on your side?" Cloud didn't mean to, but his hands moved the broom to hold it at the angle of a weapon. He was almost fully trained, and could have killed her instantly with the blunt wooden instrument.

Zack came forward and put his hand over the end of what could potentially become a dangerous weapon. "Cloud, you need to chill."

"You need to wise up!" Cloud snarled, letting go of the broom. He crossed his arms a little uncertainly with nothing to hide behind, but was still venomously angry. "There is nothing you can do to take back what you've done! Zack belongs to us now, and I'll kill you if I have to! I don't care if I have to go to jail! Sephiroth can clear the rap sheet and Zack will eventually forgive me!"

Despite the horrified look on his face, Zack began to laugh. "Cloud, what has Sephiroth done to you? You're like a cute little naked baby version of - "

"I'm not in the mood, Zack!" Cloud roared, and tried to snatch the broom back.

"Cloud, calm down!" Zack was quickly dissolving into hysterical laughter as Cloud began to strike out at him.

"Call me cute again! I dare you!"

Zack held onto the broom and turned a little, letting Cloud's fists sock into his arm, "I didn't mean it! You're not cute, you're hideous! Hit me all you want, but you can't hit a lady. Especially a... pregnant lady."

Cloud's face cleared of the angry red, went nearly white, but then immediately turned pink with embarrassment. "... You lied about the... ?"

Aerith just gave him an empty shrug.

Cloud had too many emotions and no place in his mind to put them all. It was such a bittersweet wave of excitement and relief, but it was inked with another swell of anger. "Why the fuck would you lie about that?"

Zack reached out to pull Cloud's into a hug, which was kind of awkward considering he was a jock cup away from being stark naked. "Sis, just drop it alright? Couples do weird shit to each other... I'm sure you and Seph have some disagreements."

"I wouldn't ever tell him that his child was dead!" Cloud cried.

"A congratulations might be nice," Aerith piped up.

"Oh yeah? Well congratu-fucking-lations! Get out of my store!" Cloud snatched his broom back from Zack and angrily began attacking the dust pile on the floor. He quickly stopped to give Zack a murderous glare. "And as for you... don't bother coming around me and Seph and laying out your stupid girl problems! You never listen to us, anyways! You knocked up this useless broad and now you're stuck with her for life! Congratu-fucking-lations to you, too!"

"Why are you so mad?" Zack asked with a deep frown.

"Because... because..." Cloud slowed down a bit. He was angry because Aerith was so wrong for Zack, so scheming and conniving and bitchy and horrible. He was angry for how much energy Sephiroth put into making Zack feel better on Halloween - on their anniversary, a night that should have been all about them. And he also felt betrayed that his good advice to Zack wasn't being put to use, he'd gone crawling right back into her poisonous talons.

All pretty selfish reasons, really. Cloud slumped a bit, "... I'm angry because she hurt you. She's hurt you more than once."

"Thank you," Zack told him warmly. "But this... total fucking bitch... is having my kid. And... I kind of lied to you and Seph about the finer details of the abortion thing. I mean - she did tell me she got one. But um... well, we'd kind of fought the day before and I may have suggested it. So I might have deserved it - "

"You deserved it," Aerith said firmly. "We were arguing about the baby's sex, Cloud. He told me if I wasn't going to give him a boy, I might as well sit on a rusty coat hanger."

"Zack!" Cloud gasped. "You said that?"

Zack nodded guiltily. "It's our thing. We fight a lot. It gets us going... it's something I love about her. You know me... I'm a pretty happy guy, I can't ever really get mad at headquarters without getting knocked back down by one of the Firsts. She's kind of like my punching bag."

"He's a moron," Aerith agreed. "But a sexy moron. And very easy to lie to."

"But you said you saw her going into an abortion clinic with your psychic powers!" Cloud reminded him.

Aerith laughed, "I never went into an abortion clinic, I went to my new obstetrician. Zack's just too stupid to realize what he's looking at."

Zack rolled his eyes a little bit. "We should clean up our act before my son is born."

"If it actually turns out to be a boy, I'm cutting it off. We're having a girl one way or another."

"I'll cut the girl's hair short and give her testosterone until she grows a dick - "

Cloud groaned loudly, "So you're actually telling me that you guys get off on being assholes to each other?"

Aerith reached out and took Zack's hand, swinging it slightly. "Yeah..."

Zack was beaming. "Hey Cloud... I'm gonna be a daddy."

Cloud couldn't resist a squeal. "A baby!... It's disgusting that you two had sex, but that's so exciting!"

"So you're happy for us?" Aerith asked, her usual reserved, icy expression melting into something softer.

"I have mixed feelings about you because you're the devil, but I'm really excited for another baby to play with. But most of all I'm looking forward to Sephiroth's reaction to all this."

Zack gave his baby mama a fearful, withered look, "... Maybe it's a good idea that you get the abortion, after all."

She rolled her eyes and gave him an affectionate shove. "Sephiroth will react to this like he reacts to everything - loud sounds, no tact, and crushing stupidity."

"He's a tactical genius," Cloud muttered with narrowed eyes, both hands pulling tight on the broom handle.

"He's a monster," Aerith declared with certainty. "He's also a stark raving lunatic, and has had a man-crush on Zack since before he even knew he was gay. He's just jealous of me!"

Zack shook his head rapidly, "Sephiroth does not have a crush on me!"

"... Oh my God," Cloud snorted behind both of his hands, his eyes bright and wild. "I bet he does!"

"Cloud, shut up!" Zack cried, his ears going bright with embarrassment. "Nobody has a crush on me!"

"Everyone who meets you has a crush on you!" Aerith laughed.

"I have a little crush on you," Cloud admitted.

"See? You're irresistible," Aerith cooed, tucking herself under his arm. "Sephiroth will be fine. We'll still fight and break up all the time, and he'll still get to fix your problems."

"Are you getting married?" Cloud sighed, leaning his head against his broom dreamily.

Zack grimaced, but was thankful for the subject change. "I really hate weddings. And it's not like we can afford anything right now - "

Cloud completely forgot his wrath, and reached out with wiggling fingers to grab Aerith's hand. "Seph and I could help! He has remarkable taste and all these really weird hookups in the fashion industry - I bet he could even score you a Vera Wang for free! And I can cook! I'll make some finger food! And we even have like, four tiers of this huge wedding cake in Seph's freezer leftover from our anniversary - "

"Why do you have a wedding cake in Seph's freezer?" Zack wondered aloud.

Aerith's eyes softened, and she tightened her fingers around Cloud's. "Thanks, but really... Zack's right. Marriage isn't a big priority... and I'm not sure if I really want to spend my life with this idiot."

Cloud's excitement didn't dim. "You should at least throw a baby shower to get some gifts!"

"But why do you have a wedding cake in Seph's freezer?" Zack repeated.

"There will definitely be a shower," Aerith nodded. "You'll get an invitation through Sephiroth. And make that cheapskate get us something good."

"He will! I bet he'd like to decorate a baby room, too!"

"You think he would? Isn't he like all pretentious about decorating, though?"

"Sephiroth is not pretentious," Cloud insisted. "He will love doing this for you guys."

"Maybe it'd be nice to have a mural," Aerith thought aloud. "What do you think, Zack?"

"... Why do you have a wedding cake in Seph's freezer?"

"Who cares?" Aerith cried.

"We're in a spiritual union," Cloud answered flippantly, then turned back to Aerith. "What kind of mural would you want?"

"I guess it would depend on the baby's sex," She put a finger to her chin in thought. "I wish I could will it to be a girl."

"You and Seph got gay married and I wasn't even invited?" Zack asked, his handsome face twisted into a mess of confusion.

"No, we're not married!" Cloud made a face as he suddenly felt naked again, and stood behind his broom. "We just kind of... wanted to shit on the institution of heterosexual unions by having a wedding cake on our first anniversary. Actually that's bullshit, I think Seph just wanted some cake."

"You could have invited me over for some..." Zack crossed his arms in annoyance. "What flavor was it? I want a piece!"

"Zack! It's not your flipping cake!" Aerith suddenly roared. "This is why I can't marry you, you are a toddler in a man's body!"

Zack pursed his lips for a moment, then whispered, "Can we get some cake after we leave here?"

"... Fine. That sounds good," she agreed, her mood instantly lifting. She glanced back at Cloud. "We're leaving."

"Good, your business is no longer welcome here," Cloud took the broom and shooed them out of the store. "Come back for crotchless panties or whatever you were going to buy some other day when I don't have to deal with you."

With the promise of cake, Zack allowed himself to be brushed out onto the sidewalk. "Alright, see you later. Tell Seph I said 'hey' when you talk to him!"

"Don't tell him you saw me, I want to break the news to him personally," Aerith smiled, following Zack's arm down the sidewalk.

Cloud thought for a moment that they looked cute together, a nice little family. He then got a strong craving for some of that cake in the freezer. Mostly it was covered in streaks of Sephiroth's semen from their food fight, but it was still good eating. He liked a little hint of saltiness in his dessert, anyways.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Attention...uh... you hags over there," Cloud shouted, turning off the music. "Dirty Rubbers is closed. Decide what you want, come pay for it, then please get out."

Dirty Rubbers closed at midnight, and that sounded much earlier than it felt. Cloud was utterly exhausted, and the later it became, the busier the store got with people rushing for last minute props and accessories to complete their night. It was fun and interesting to see what people were buying, and it really gave him insight into people's freaky sex lives.

After seeing some of the things people bought, he figured that he probably had the most mundane sex life in Midgar.

But with a boyfriend like Sephiroth... who really needed blowup dolls and fleshlights and nipple clamps? Maybe one day it'd be fun to try different things, but for the time being he was having a good time with Sephiroth's... body. Just being close to that man's body was enough.

Cloud's voyeuristic retail fascination wore off around ten o'clock, by eleven he was so sleepy that he was nodding off behind the register, and by closing time he had no patience left at all. Cloud leaned on the counter and glared as a bachelorette party made their final nasty purchases.

"Why do you girls need fifteen dildos? There are only ten of you," Cloud muttered as he bagged up their merchandise.

The bachelorette posse simply giggled at him.

Cloud balanced the register and put the money in the store's safe, turned off the lights and locked up, and then slipped the spare key back in through the mail slot. He'd be lucky to be in bed before three that morning by the time he walked to the train station, rode it up to the upper plate, then walked to the Academy. It wasn't a bad little gig, but Cloud wondered how he would keep it up... Thursday mornings would be rough from now on.

Shin-Ra was a lifestyle. Maybe it was wishful thinking that he might have a little retail getaway. He frowned, lamenting his body's need for sleep as he zipped up his jacket and began to trot down the sidewalk.

A black vehicle slowed down beside him and honked, and it being late night in the downtown slums, Cloud decided to keep his eyes on the sidewalk and ignore it. He didn't want any drugs and he wasn't selling his ass, so he had no business talking to anybody down here.

"Hey!" came a voice. And then, "Cloud!"

He looked up at that, and saw two very unlikely people. It was Sephiroth's lesbian Turk friend Elena, and Marty, the young Turk trainee that was emotionally invested in Sephiroth and Vincent's family drama.

"Hi," Cloud answered in surprise, wondering if his sleepiness had graduated to the hallucinogenic stage.

"We'll give you a lift," Elena said.

"... Are you sure?" Cloud asked uncertainly.

She rolled her eyes. "Just get in already."

Cloud opened the door and dropped down onto the warm leather backseat with a gush of happiness. "Thank you! Wow, this is a really nice car!"

"It's not my car," Elena said, stepping on the gas. "Buckle your seatbelt."

Cloud quickly did, and held onto it with both hands as the petite Turk began to veer her way around slower traffic. "Jesus, did Sephiroth teach you how to drive?"

"Yes," she answered curtly, switching lanes and taking off with a velocity that pressed Cloud back into his seat.

He was used to giving control to skilled but insane drivers, so instead he tried to initiate conversation with Marty. "Hey, I haven't seen you since the party at Rhonda's. How are you?"

"I do nothing but train with... her," Marty answered distantly, throwing a look at Elena. "I haven't slept in four days."

"Why?" Cloud balked.

"Turks should be able to stay awake for a week," Elena answered for him. "I haven't slept in four days either, and I'm fine."

"That's inhumane!" Cloud laughed, looking between the two of them for a hint of humor, or some sign they were pulling his leg. They were both serious. "... Jesus, I'm glad I'm not gonna be a Turk."

Elena chuckled sarcastically at that. "The Turks wouldn't take you."

"Why not?" Cloud asked, mildly offended.

"You are what we call..." Elena searched for the right term.

"A jock?" Marty guessed.

"Oh! A jock?" Cloud cried in ecstasy. "You actually think I'm a jock?"

Elena was silent as she maneuvered around a particularly difficult traffic spot, and for a few moments they were totally driving on the sidewalk. She nearly floored it as clear road opened up ahead. "... Maybe, but what do they call a jock who... is too small and weak to actually play the game?"

"I don't think there's a word for that," Marty said with a small shrug.

"No there is. It was an Adam Sandler movie."

"Waterboy?"

"Yes!" Elena nodded, tapping her hand on the wheel as she chuckled. "Cloud is a SOLDIER waterboy."

"That's so cold!" Marty shouted, finding some vein of humor in the cruel observation.

Marty's laughter made tears spring to his eyes, because even though they didn't know one another well, Cloud thought they were friends. It was okay to laugh at a friend's expense, but not like... that. Cloud viciously bit his lip to stop it from trembling, and decided to ignore the last word in Elena's sentence and focus on the first four - Cloud is a SOLDIER.

The Turks kept chuckling at him, so with the threat of crying past, he declared, "Thank you Miss Elena, for that veiled and very backhanded compliment."

"Waterboys grow up to be watermen," Elena said. "And water is the strongest of all the elements."

Marty looked at her, "What are you talking about?"

"I dunno, I'm just trying to make him feel better. I think I actually hurt his feelings."

"You didn't hurt my feelings," Cloud drawled brattily as he glared out of his window, keeping his eyes wide to allow air to dry them out. Men could take jokes, SOLDIERs could take jokes, so he could take a joke.

Elena glanced at him in the rearview mirror. "If it's any consolation, Sephiroth cares for his waterboy very much. We're here to give you a ride home, after all."

Cloud gave a tired, lopsided smile. "I kind of figured. You don't like me enough to just offer me a ride for no reason."

"You're right," Elena agreed. "But Sephiroth rarely asks for favors, so it's no trouble to me. Some other people disrespect us enough to have us pick up their children from school and give them snacks."

"And do their homework," Marty grumbled.

"So we'll give you a ride home every week from this meaningless job of yours," Elena then told him. "Until you get yourself fired or something."

Cloud shrugged. "I was just thinking I might quit. I'll let you know how I feel getting up at five tomorrow."

"Why sleep at all?" Marty asked. "Just stay up."

Cloud frowned, "I like to sleep."

"Lazy," Elena observed.

"Sleeping is a normal human function!" Cloud bellowed.

"Loud, too," Elena shook her head with a smile, clearly baiting Cloud into anger. "Not to mention a crybaby."

With a million catty retorts itching on his tongue, Cloud decided to remain silent.

Elena had Cloud at the Academy gates in twenty minutes. He was a bit dazed from her driving, and a little disillusioned by the Turks' low opinion of him, but gratefully thanked them for the ride just the same. "I appreciate it, Elena."

"I'm doing it for Sephiroth," she answered, looking at her phone instead of at Cloud.

"See ya," Marty waved, then whispered, "She's a bitch when she's sleepy."

They shared a smile before Elena rolled up Marty's window for him, and the sleek black vehicle rolled away. Cloud stood alone on the sidewalk in front of the Academy gates. It was quiet, and he looked up at the smoggy sky, faded from the city's light.

The novelty of being a Cadet still hadn't worn thin yet, but he was used to it. The Academy finally felt like home to him, the people and campus were familiar, and the schedule was his life.

As tiring as it was, he enjoyed getting up every day and learning new things. He enjoyed using his body and mind, and felt a thrill every time a punch connected just right, or when he transcended mere choreography during sword classes and actually fought from the inside. There wasn't any feeling better than getting an approving wink from an instructor who underestimated him, or getting called second or third for teams instead of dead last.

Even if it didn't end with him becoming a SOLDIER... Cloud decided that he wouldn't mind being just a waterboy. But maybe that was just his peace with defeat setting in early.

Cloud swiped his badge to open the gate, and pulled it closed behind him. It was a long walk across the campus to his room, so he pulled out his phone and dialed Sephiroth for some company.

He was mildly surprised when Sephiroth answered. "Hey kid, how was your night?"

Cloud made a noise that almost resembled speaking, but it faded off into a tiny sigh. He had a hundred things to tell Sephiroth about, but his mouth was just too tired to form words. In a mere shade of his usual self, he gave a simple answer, "Really fun."

"You sound tired," Sephiroth observed. "Must have a long ride on the train back to school, huh?"

Cloud smirked. Usually he would have played along, but he didn't have the energy, "I already got my ride from Elena. Thank you, lover."

"You're welcome," Sephiroth responded, and the smile was clear in his voice.

"Why is she so mean to me, though?"

"Mean?" Sephiroth asked in disbelief. "She's not mean."

"She's really mean," Cloud insisted.

"What are you talkin' about? She's so cute."

"Cute? She's horrible! She makes me cry every time she talks to me!" Cloud complained. "She locked me onto a toilet that one time, and then tonight she told me that I'm a wannabe SOLDIER and... other mean stuff."

"She's like two feet tall, she wears a tiny suit and tries to be a badass. Did you notice how close she has to sit to the wheel when she drives? You're gonna let yourself get pushed around by someone like that?" Sephiroth laughed.

"Never mind," Cloud grumbled, the jealous side of him not wanting to hear Sephiroth fawn over anyone else. Perhaps Elena's dry cruelty might seem harmless if he was substantially taller than her, but he could probably fit into her "tiny" suit - a fact that made him angry all over again. "I'm not going to try and be friends with your friends, so keep your fucking hags. They all hate me."

"They do not. They like you a lot, I promise."

Cloud changed the subject, "So how's your trip going? Is the new base pretty?"

"It is kind of pretty. But today was long. Just walkin' around the construction, actin' like I give a shit. Right now I'm just hidin' in my room."

"Hiding from what?"

"Pants. I don't feel like wearin' any."

Cloud chuckled, suddenly feeling a lot better. "So you're pantless? What are you doing pantless?"

"Watchin' a marathon of Junon Shore," Sephiroth admitted.

"Is that all?" Cloud flirted.

"Did you forget where I am? Right now my dick is the size of a baby carrot."

Cloud laughed, clearly remembering the cruel Northern Crater's effect on his own genitals. He'd been doomed to a mere tent, but he supposed that sort of freezing cold permeated even the most solid of structures, "Poor dear! Get under some covers!"

"I'm under all of them," Sephiroth drawled glumly. "If I ever get stationed here, I'm gonna have to hire you as my personal lap warmer."

"That's my dream job!" Cloud agreed, and loudly kissed his phone several times in an attempt to warm his lover from afar. Then he turned to happier matters. "Are you still going to be back home on Sunday morning?"

Sephiroth grunted a little bit, "Yeah, really early. If you're not doin' anything Saturday night, you should go sleep at my place. I'll be there way before you even wake up."

Cloud gave a little groan of longing as he entered the Rufus Building, and quickly lowered his voice not to disturb anyone, "... So on Sunday morning I get to wake up to you in bed with me?"

Sephiroth gave an audible shiver, "Christ that sounds so good right now."

"Now I won't be able to sleep at all on Saturday! I'll be excited and waiting for you!" Cloud squealed tinnily as used the last of his energy to gallop up the staircase.

"Lube up a little bit before you go to bed."

Cloud swallowed a little sputter, opening the door to his room and entering quietly. He patted Psycho on the head as he lifted it to regard Cloud sleepily. "... You're so dirty, Seph."

"I'm dirty? You're the one who started it, ya fuckin' tease."

"No!" Cloud giggled breathily, quickly kicking off his shoes and shedding his clothes. Cameron was sound asleep in his bed, so he felt safe continuing the conversation with his beloved. "All I said was that I'll be too excited to sleep..."

"Excited," Sephiroth repeatedly.

"I meant happy!"

"Happy to warm up my cock with your ass," Sephiroth corrected.

It was difficult loving someone who was always right. Cloud continued to giggle as he pulled on some flannel pants, biting his lip as he ran a hand over the outline of his own cock, which always loved to pop up and listen in on conversations with Sephiroth. "Well... I am a little anxious. I've been sexually harassed all evening at my new job."

Sephiroth hummed curiously. He liked the idea of Cloud finally comfortable in his body. He was gorgeous, streamlined, and gaining mass in all the right places, and he deserved to feel sexy. But Sephiroth didn't like the idea of random, gross people drooling all over him, objectifying him, or greedily rubbing their dirty hands all over Cloud's assets.

That was Sephiroth's job. "Nobody touched you, did they?"

"Eh, I got pinched a little by some straight boys wanting to make their girlfriends wet. Nothing major."

"... Whadja wear? Undies and angel wings again?"

"No. This time it was a black jockstrap, white cleats... and socks."

Sephiroth made a small, throaty noise, "What color socks?"

"Black, but not the ones you like," Cloud lowered his voice a bit as he crawled into bed. "These went up to my thighs."

"Okay... Didja take a picture for me?"

"Nope."

"Bullshit. You did."

"Well, maybe."

"Send it."

"I don't want to come off like a tease or anything," Cloud grinned.

"Please?" Sephiroth literally arched his back off the bed in order to raise his voice and inject a playful, kittenish squeak into it.

"What was that little noise?" Cloud asked on a sharp fit of muffled giggling, "Do that again!"

If anyone else but Cloud had heard that, it would have meant complete humiliation and he probably would have had to kill the eavesdropping party. Sephiroth tried to recreate the sound he'd made, but couldn't quite manage it.

Instead it came out as an awkward, pubescent squawk and he coughed it away, "Ugh, that actually hurt my throat. Now cut the bullshit and send me the fuckin' picture."

"Okay, okay..." Cloud was silent for a moment while Sephiroth received a photograph taken in the cracked mirror of the Dirty Rubbers dressing room. Cloud was turned around, showing off how perfectly the jock strap framed his tan, round little ass. He was only slightly bent over, but just enough that his hole was visible. The socks themselves were actually a black woman's thigh high, but the way they accentuated the lines of Cloud's slim, toned thighs made them appear like athletic wear.

Sephiroth's eyes moved across the picture, savoring the small details. "Your legs... make me crazy."

"Why?" Cloud asked, running a hand over his thighs. "They're just legs. Skinny legs, at that."

"I dunno. When I see 'em, I just want 'em around me."

Cloud closed his eyes, easily picturing Sephiroth situated between his thighs and that soft mouth within a kissable distance. He pressed a palm against the ache in his pajama bottoms; no matter how tired he might be, Sephiroth's voice always woke up key parts of his anatomy. There was a level of bass to it that Cloud could feel vibrating against him, even over the phone. "... So you like those socks?"

"Oh yeah."

"Gus gave them to me, since he had to open up the package they came in. I'll put them on for you on Sunday."

"Can I ruin 'em?" Sephiroth rumbled into the phone. "I wanna shred 'em apart."

Cloud spoke as softly as he could, glancing over his shoulder to ensure Cameron was still asleep. "Seph, stop it..."

"I don't wanna."

Cloud sighed. Even though his hand was grasped around his cock, fatigue still weighed heavily on him. "... Seph?"

"Hm?"

"I wanna play with you... But even if you were with me right now, I think I'd probably just fall asleep on you."

"Truthfully, I'm way too cold to even think about gettin' it up. If you were here I'd just... ya know, do romantic shit to you."

"Romantic shit? Like what?" Cloud smiled, wiggling on his bed eagerly.

"Romantic shit," Sephiroth insisted. "Kiss you... hold you... listen to your heartbeat... fall asleep with my cock wedged between your ass cheeks. Romantic shit."

Cloud pushed his face into his pillow to contain the noise of his giggling. When he was safe from waking Cameron, he grinned into the phone, "I love you so much!"

"Go to sleep now, baby."

"Nooo, don't hang up on me!" Cloud whined.

"What?"

"Say more sweet things to me."

"Whaddaya want me to say?"

"Anything," Cloud grinned, trying to sound more alert than he felt.

"I need to get up and get dressed."

"Why?"

"I'm hungry. The cafeteria's open for dinner now, I think."

"What are you going to have?"

"Fuck if I know," Sephiroth laughed helplessly at Cloud's clumsy tactics to keep him on the line. "I gotta go eat, and you need to sleep."

"No, not yet!" Cloud pouted. "Talk to me while you're getting ready, so I can fall asleep listening to you."

"What a spoiled brat," Sephiroth remarked.

"Pretty please?" Cloud asked again, his voice quiet but sugar sweet.

This was something they'd done many times before, and was probably the most indulgent thing he could do for Cloud being thousands of miles away. He didn't have any real objection to doing it, but some part of him felt like he should feel inconvenienced... or at least act like he did. "... I gotta put some clothes on. I'll talk 'til I'm done, then I'm hangin' up."

"'Kay," Cloud sighed sleepily. He put his phone on his pillow beside his ear, and shifted to get even more comfortable.

Sephiroth waited a moment for Cloud to comply, and then he began to tell Cloud in more detail about the flight, about his time with Vincent, and about the new base. Cloud responded at first, but then began to doze, allowing Sephiroth's even, monotonous voice to draw his consciousness towards pleasant visions. Through closed eyes, Cloud could picture him moving around the room and getting ready; he was lying on the bed and just watching. It was his domestic privilege as Sephiroth's lover to watch him lift his shirt to put on deodorant and loop a belt through his pants. Those tiny parts of him were the most fun, and Cloud was able to fall asleep with a smile.

When Sephiroth finished pulling on his combat boots, he listened carefully to the barely audible sound of his lover's soft breathing. He quietly asked, "Asleep?"

There was no reply, which answered the question. Right now Cloud was in Midgar, curled up in his squeaky little bed with his mouth slightly parted, begging to be kissed. If Sephiroth had been there he would have been happy to do it.

The thought made his heart beat just a little faster, just enough to tease his rational brain with physical proof of how badly he had it for Cloud Strife. It wasn't just "romantic shit," it was a physical involuntary bodily reaction, and even after more than a year it still snuck up and surprised him. For a person like Sephiroth, surprises were especially exciting, and he enjoyed the ache in his chest for several long moments.

Then it transferred to his stomach, which growled impatiently.

"Alright, I'm gonna hang up now. Night..." Sephiroth hesitated, hating being the one to hang up. Although it fell upon deaf ears, he said it again, "Night, Cloud. I love you."

He waited a beat in case there was a reply before closing his phone.

Cloud's eyes fluttered a bit, realizing the loss. He curled up a little tighter, and found deeper sleep until his alarm went off three hours later.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Saturday found Sephiroth dying a slow, dull death in the new Northern Crater Base's cafeteria.

The mission was done; forms were scribbled upon, the place had been inspected, and he'd staked a claim for the SOLDIERs in one of the wings... in the unlikely event that anyone actually was stationed here. Maybe it would be a fun place to stick people that pissed him off. Or a handy place to hide if he needed to chill out.

Other than that, he'd do his best to never return to this part of the planet. Ever.

There were still several hours to kill before their airship arrived. Like any extended construction project, the cafeteria was finished first; it set the tone for the rest of the base, and gave everyone there a place to relax without being surrounded by scaffolding and exposed wire.

Vincent and Sephiroth had stayed in this room for most of the afternoon, because it was the only place they didn't get in the way of the workers. And it'd been made clear to Sephiroth after several suggestions he'd made to revise the layout of some of the unfinished rooms, that his input as a General was valuable... but his input as an amateur interior designer was not.

They'd played cards with the construction workers while they breaked for lunch, they'd talked, they'd eaten, and now they were sick of each other. Vincent was leaning back in his chair and playing some sort of farming game on his phone, and Sephiroth was left staring at his laptop. He eventually gave up on that and looked out the large windows to the Crater itself.

"Let's go hike down into the Crater," he drawled with no real passion, popping his gum a few times.

"I would rather die..." Vincent replied slowly, most of his attention upon harvesting his Farmville crops. "... than go down into that fuckin' pit."

Sephiroth crossed his arms on the table. There was still enough daylight to dick around down there without getting too cold or lost. "C'mon, let's go. Supposed to be pretty down there."

"The walls could be lined with tits - I'll never know 'cause I'm not goin'."

"... I'm gonna do it. Better than sittin' here."

"Button your coat up all the way..." Vincent muttered distractedly, still tapping repeatedly at his screen while playing his game. His bright red eyes blinked repeatedly when he realized what he'd just said to the grown man across the table, and sneered in an attempt to cover it up, "... If you're not back in time for the airship, I will not hesitate to leave without you."

"Cute," Sephiroth said with a roll of his eyes. Secretly though, there was a nostalgic rush from his childhood, leaving him both bashful and slightly annoyed. "If I'm not back in two hours, I've frozen to death."

"I'll be more surprised if you don't freeze to death."

Sephiroth bought a few energy bars from the vending machine, and then went to his room to change into a slightly more substantial version of his usual uniform. It wasn't a good look to have a reddened triangle of frost bite on his chest. He took Vincent's advice to button up tight, and decided to tie his hair up underneath a cap instead of dealing with it flying into his face. He looped a scarf around his neck and was good to go.

The Northern Crater was a place people talked about visiting in their lifetimes, but never really did. Only a few airlines even had the correct flying equipment to make it there, resulting in a very long, very expensive flight for civilians. Not to mention that there was exactly one place to lodge this far up North, and it was nowhere near the Crater itself. And as any SOLDIER or infantryman who'd been trapped there for months would attest to, camping outside in a frozen tundra was not awesome.

As Sephiroth exited the building, the initial blast of cold was almost enough to have him turn around and go right back inside. But there was a patrolling infantryman watching him, and it'd be bad form as a General to hiss and run back indoors. So with barely a wince, he marched through the clearing and to the edge of the Crater.

Pictures of it were gorgeous, especially with the Northern lights twinkling and reflecting upon the icy surface. But in person, the famous Northern Crater really was just a huge, snow covered hole in the ground. Sephiroth peered down inside curiously.

There was a very crude little rope ladder system connecting places where it was safe to walk, intended for brave tour guides and their shivering tour groups. With the new base, they would soon have a more sophisticated lift system in place, but Sephiroth found it easier just to jump between the ice shelves. It was actually pretty fun.

The caves were as pretty as he'd hoped they'd be, with glowing mako veins lining the walls. When he heard a low grumbling, he slowly slid Masamune out of its sheath and followed the sound out of certainty that it was a female protecting her young. Males were lazy and usually slow, while females were the ones who attacked, especially if babies were around.

To Sephiroth's delight, it was a mother polar bear with two awkward little fuzzy cubs. He put a Sleep on her just long enough to creep in close and take some pictures, which he then sent to Cloud. The cubs were utterly confused by his presence, but didn't seem afraid.

Once the thrill of the bear family wore off, the cold began to sink in. He began to retrace his steps, wanting to hop back up out of the place now that his goals were achieved. He'd had more than enough of the Northern Crater experience.

But as he got back out onto the main opening, he looked down farther into the pit curiously. It seemed almost as though there was a warmth radiating from there. Even though he knew very little about the nature of huge ass craters, it seemed a little odd to him that it should be warm near the bottom.

He worked his gum through his teeth until it was a small, hard ball and spat it down into the depths of the Crater. He waited, listening for the sound of impact.

To his disappointment, there wasn't one. With his sharp SOLDIER sense of hearing, he should have heard some sort of splash, or tiny tap of that gum wad hitting something. The only explanation was that it was so deep he couldn't hear it... or that there was no bottom.

That was a stupid thing to think. But the idea of the edge of a giant, gaping, bottomless hole was pretty terrifying, and the illusion was impossible to shake off once it set in. Sephiroth felt almost like he was leaning forward, vertigo urging him to lean right into the hole and freefall to wherever it led.

It was almost like the water jug in the lab. It was almost exactly like that.

Sephiroth slowly pushed himself back up onto his feet, not taking his eyes off the dark depths. He didn't want to go any further down, but he also didn't want to turn around to make his way back up... it would mean turning his back on that strangely alluring darkness.

It was a childlike feeling but a very real one, and something he hadn't felt since his last brush with Jenova. It crawled along his back, a fear far worse than any make believe monster could make him feel.

"Echo," Sephiroth called out, purposely making some noise to shake out his nerves. In his mind he sounded brave in a very Bruce Campbell way, but his voice came bouncing back sounding nervous to his own ears.

He decided to sit back on his haunches and eat a cereal bar, flippantly ignoring the heavy silence that followed. He rubbed the back of his neck in an effort to ease his apprehension, and stuffed the rest of the bar in his mouth nearly whole.

He was suddenly wondering about tranquilizers and getting back to the base in time before the attack. But what attack? He didn't hear anything, and there was no reason that Jenova should effect him now. He'd been on top of his mako dilation, he'd been taking his meds and doing exactly as the doctors told him. Levels were good, whatever that meant.

With a dreadful sense of apprehension, as though the Crater would spit knives at his back once he turned it, Sephiroth used every bit of spring in his heels to propel himself up the icy shelves of the Crater's walls. It felt almost like he was a toddler using his hands and feet to shamble up a flight of stairs out of a basement, terror licked at his heels and adrenaline pumped his nerves into a frenzy.

The same infantry trooper was standing guard at the mouth of the Crater. Even under the anonymity of his helmet, he appeared a little surprised when Sephiroth emerged like a blast out of a cannon, with a neat, albeit hard landing in the snow. He crouched for impact, but it still left him wincing and off balance, until he straightened up to salvage his dignity.

"General Sephiroth!" the trooper greeted, nearly clicking his heels in an attempt to snap to a perfect salute.

Sephiroth nodded to him. "At ease. I didn't mean to startle you."

"Sir, no, sir!" he shouted with another perfect salute.

"... The Crater goes down quite a ways," Sephiroth observed, groping for conversation after the harrowing experience.

"Sir, yes, sir! Sir!" ... Infantry were like that.

Sephiroth let the trooper keep his formality and headed back inside, making a beeline for the cafeteria and straight to Vincent's table. He took his former seat immediately, and stared at Vincent expectantly.

"That was fast," the Turk remarked. "I wasn't really gonna leave without ya."

Sephiroth just folded his arms on the table, and rested his head. He'd clearly left the monsters behind in the Crater, and the entire event seemed silly to him... but he peeked over his arm and towards the giant hole in the ground.

"See anything interesting?" Vincent asked.

"No," Sephiroth answered, baby polar bears completely forgotten.

"Nothin'?" Vincent looked up from his phone. "... Not even - "

"No," was all Sephiroth would say about it. "Nothing."

Down in the darkness, even further than Sephiroth dared to imagine the Crater's depths to be, that wad of gum he'd spat out was slowly separating from the clear liquid of his saliva.

On the cellular level, it began to multiply.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud was sound asleep when Sephiroth crept into the bedroom. He had a feeling Cloud might be, considering that the apartment was silent when he entered, and if Cloud had been conscious there would have been at least a mild commotion.

The light was still on in his room, and there were abandoned music magazines on the bed and floor. Only Cloud's hair was visible, although several small pieces blew away from his face with every deep, slow breath. Sephiroth reached out and moved the blonde spikes out of Cloud's eyes, smiling down at the peaceful, vacant expression he found there. The hair sprung back into place, and Sephiroth straightened up to unfasten his coat and pull off his clothes.

Even though Midgar's late fall weather was nothing compared the harsh North, it was still uncomfortably chilly in his bedroom. Sephiroth rubbed his arms a little bit as he went to the thermostat control panel in the hallway, and made a face of annoyance at the fact that the heat hadn't even been turned on.

April Strife had physically reprimanded Cloud when he was a child if he tried to adjust the thermostat. Gas heating was a luxury they couldn't often afford on a single parent's income, and was used only when the temperature dropped to unbearable levels, and never when they were sleeping at night.

Sephiroth had spent most of his life cold and uncomfortable, so he made a decision as an adult to never suffer for a single moment in his own home. He liked wasting money on the gas bill. He wanted Cloud to feel free to turn it on all night long if it was cold outside. Cloud could turn the loft into a sauna and sleep naked and sweating for all Sephiroth cared.

With warmer temperatures on the way, Sephiroth reentered the bedroom to quietly shed the remainder of his clothes. He set Cloud's magazines on the floor, then lifted the blanket and slid into his bed, intent on getting to the body beneath his covers.

The warmth radiating from Cloud's back felt so good against Sephiroth's chest and stomach. It was like a heating pad covered in smooth silk, and he greedily curled his arms underneath Cloud to draw him closer.

"... Seph!" Cloud squirmed upon being handled and turned his head, lips kissing wherever they landed. After placing kisses against his shoulder, throat, and chin, Cloud finally found Sephiroth's mouth.

He meant to only give Cloud a chaste greeting kiss before allowing him to go back to sleep, but Cloud held his face close and opened his mouth, and the invitation was too sweet to resist. Cloud's tongue and lips were soft and yielding, putting Sephiroth in a trance while his legs and arms snaked around him like vines.

Sephiroth helped out, crawling up over Cloud's body and between his legs, which is right where they both wanted him to be. Cloud smiled up at him, "... Hi."

"Hi," Sephiroth answered, already working on kissing the rest of Cloud's face.

Cloud closed his eyes and tilted into the kisses, petting down the length of Sephiroth's glossy silver hair. He laughed a little, "Your hair's cold."

"S'cold outside. And someone didn't turn on the heat before he went to bed," Sephiroth pressed his cold nose against Cloud's and puckered out his lips to kiss him chastely.

"I got under the covers and forgot," Cloud explained, rubbing his nose against Sephiroth's in an effort to warm it up. "... I tried to wait up for you, but I guess I fell asleep."

"So sleep," Sephiroth encouraged, burying his nose into the top of Cloud's hair and breathing in the clean scent of his scalp.

"I'm awake now," Cloud's hand lifted lazily to comb his fingers through the hair framing Sephiroth's face, tucking the longer pieces behind his ears. Cloud's fingers traveled down the back of Sephiroth's neck and tightened their hold to pull him closer.

Sephiroth dipped his tongue into Cloud's mouth, and came back up to lick his lips with a smile. "You taste kinda nice. What'd you eat?"

"Bonbons before bed, like you told me to. I still do it most nights."

"Makes you taste good..." Sephiroth told him.

"Do you feel that?" Cloud asked, pulling Sephiroth close against his body with both legs.

"Uh huh," Sephiroth nodded, pulling his hips back a bit to gently ghost the underside of his cock against Cloud's. He then pushed down to press his balls against Cloud's, and let out a deep breath. "You feel so fuckin' hot."

"No, not that. I mean uh... I did something weird," Cloud winced a little.

"What?" Sephiroth asked, evaluating what he was feeling pressed up against his body. Everything seemed to be in the right place...

"Here," Cloud murmured, taking one of Sephiroth's hands and guiding it near his cock. He instinctively tried to curl his fist around it, but Cloud pulled his fingers away and instead placed them on the area of his lower stomach.

It took Sephiroth a moment to realize that instead of wiry, blonde hair on Cloud's stomach and groin, it was all pearly soft skin. "You shaved?"

"Yeah."

"... Why?"

Cloud shrugged a shoulder against the mattress. "I was in the bath last night trimming up, and I decided to try getting rid of all of it. I just wanted to see how it would look... I'm starting to get this little fuzzy trail thing on my tummy - "

"I love that fuzzy trail thing," Sephiroth blurted before he could stop himself.

Cloud's clear blue eyes went wide in horror. Up until that point, Sephiroth had never had any complaint about anything he'd done to his body or put on it, and he wasn't sure how to process it. It wasn't as though Sephiroth was rejecting him or being unkind, but he felt an uneasy mixture of embarrassment and guilt for possibly making himself unattractive in Sephiroth's eyes. "Seph... I'm sorry - "

"No," Sephiroth quickly took Cloud's face and kissed his mouth and cheeks repeatedly. "Don't be sorry. I just kinda liked your stuff that way it was... it was sexy."

"I didn't know..." Cloud lamented miserably.

"It's alright," Sephiroth chuckled, easing away any more doubt by drowning it in kisses. He could easily deal with the loss, but he didn't realize how attracted he was to Cloud's small amount of body hair until it was gone.

Cloud's shoulders and hips were masculine and narrow, but the way his waist bowed in slightly beneath his rib cage was extremely feminine... that fuzzy trail of honey blonde hair was a contradiction to that, and one that Sephiroth greatly enjoyed seeing splattered with semen, or poking up from the tight, low slung jeans Cloud wore. It also felt good against his nose when he was sucking Cloud off, or just something fuzzy for his fingers to comb through while spooning him.

"It'll grow back in like a week. Probably thicker than before," Cloud offered with a chuckle, arching his back a little as Sephiroth's hand continued to pet thoughtfully over his artificially smooth groin. "... Now that I know you like it, I won't shave it again. Promise."

"I've gotta check this shit out." Sephiroth licked his lips and shifted over Cloud's body, sliding back between his legs. He was curious about how it felt under his tongue, and if it would still smell the same without the hair.

Sephiroth brushed his nose down the center of Cloud's chest, and stopped to briefly greet both pale, pink nipples. He appreciatively lapped his tongue over the tiny, tight hills of Cloud's stomach muscles, and on down to his small outie belly button where a tiny trail of hair no longer began. It was slick and soft under his tongue, all the way down to Cloud's cock.

Upon sight, Cloud's groin didn't really look much different from a lack of hair, but it was a little odd seeing the exact point where his cock jutted from his body. In fact, it was so terribly juvenile-looking that he found himself laughing, "Awww. You're all smooth like a G.I. Joe."

Cloud watched with a dry expression, as laughter wasn't the reaction he liked getting with Sephiroth's face near his groin. "... I'll just turn over so you don't have to see it."

"It's not such a big deal," Sephiroth continued to laugh against Cloud's skin, running his tongue between Cloud's thighs and discreetly inhaling against the area.

He wasn't sure if the spontaneous shaving spree had effected the scent, all he knew was that it smelled delicious. He pressed his nose against him in a much less discreet manner, breathing deeply against Cloud's skin. He pushed Cloud's hips up a little bit and let his tongue run down over Cloud's balls and between his cheeks.

Cloud gave a little moan that sounded more like a question, and spread wider for Sephiroth's tongue. His hands snaked their way down from underneath his body, and his long fingers gripped to hold his cheeks open.

"You like that, don't you?" Sephiroth asked, staring up Cloud's body to watch his face.

"Yeah," Cloud breathed, adjusting his fingers to pull tighter, making it wider to accept Sephiroth's tongue. He was tense though, and the pink little hole puckered tight.

"Relax... let it gape a little bit," Sephiroth instructed, kissing Cloud's inner thighs to ease any embarrassment his words might have caused. Cloud was blushed bright red all the way down to his chest, but he obeyed. Even his toes went slack from their curled, tense position. With another calming breath he continued to let his body relax as much as possible, and yet his hole was still tiny from a week of disuse.

Sephiroth flicked his tongue against it once, smiling as it quickly tightened up like a flower blooming in reverse. "... Quit that. I want in."

Cloud gave a shuddering laugh, "Your tongue is really warm. It feels - "

"What?" Sephiroth asked curiously. "It's good when I eat your ass?"

Cloud's gaze shifted to some non descript point on the ceiling. "... I guess."

"You're allowed to say you like it," Sephiroth encouraged, flicking his tongue back out to touch the pink indent again, and slowly traced the perimeter.

"... I think I like that you like it," Cloud defended, but then decided to strive for honesty. "... At first, anyways. I've learned to, um... appreciate it for myself."

"I hope so," Sephiroth licked his lips to say, then reached back out to move his tongue over the uneven, ridged pucker of his ass. He still couldn't pinpoint exactly what he liked best about doing this, but just the taste and feel of Cloud's tiny, pulsing little hole on his tongue made him feel carnivorous.

Cloud giggled, and it became an elongated sound as Sephiroth tensed the muscles in his tongue and used the appendage to dig in. He closed his eyes and licked Cloud from the inside out, not letting the little opening push him back out.

Cloud began to moan softly, and his body fought against the intrusion involuntarily. Sephiroth pushed his long tongue in deeper, drooling as the tasty hole hugged it tight. Sephiroth moved Cloud's fingers out of the way, and replaced them with his own to push his cheeks open even wider, making the opening a little easier to lap his tongue into.

"Feels so good," Cloud muttered on a little gasping breath, his eyes dropping closed as his head fell back against the pillow. Sephiroth slapped the curve of Cloud's ass, growling slightly as it clenched tight onto his tongue in surprise.

He stretched out his tongue until the muscles in his jaw hurt, and rubbed it into the tight bump of Cloud's prostate. With a sharp cry, Cloud reached down to dig his fingers into Sephiroth's hair. Sephiroth took a breath against Cloud's skin, and his sharp teeth inadvertently pressed against the sensitive expanse of Cloud's perineum.

It was a dangerous dance of sensation that bordered right on pain, each of Sephiroth's white, ridiculously sharp teeth were pressing into the most secretive and sensitive area of his body. In contrast, the hot, wet, wriggling softness of Sephiroth's tongue was deep inside him, licking against a spot that made his cock weep.

"... Seph!" Cloud gasped, biting hard onto his lips as he crossed his ankles behind Sephiroth's head to keep him close. Sephiroth opened his eyes and looked up, not taking his tongue off Cloud's prostate. Cloud's mouth fell open as his eyelids drooped low, and that sultry expression on his pretty doll face was all the encouragement Sephiroth needed to keep moving his tongue exactly like that.

Without really thinking about it, Sephiroth dragged his cock across the sheets while he had his face buried between Cloud's cheeks. He wanted inside his tight hole, but it tasted too good to back away from. And the way Cloud's hands and thighs were holding him close, it seemed Cloud didn't want him to stop, either.

"Seph..." Cloud moaned again, both pushing and pulling on his hair and not hesitating to yank when his teeth sank in too deep. When Sephiroth's hand came up to wrap around his cock, he sucked in a deep breath only to let it go in a shout. "Seph!"

With one hand jerking Cloud's cock and the other gripping his thigh to hold him open wide, Sephiroth continued to steadily wriggle his tongue inside Cloud. He pushed through the tightness of Cloud's inner muscles, and also though the cramping discomfort in his jaw. Anything to keep that look on Cloud's face was worth it... the need to make him climax was more important than a small matter of pain.

In his determination to make Cloud climax, Sephiroth became far too excited to maintain control of his own body. He rocked his hips against the sheets, unconsciously experiencing pleasure through his tongue, and through a lover's keen sexual empathy. He snarled against Cloud's ass, utterly lost and shameless in his need to feel that it clench on his tongue... like it had clenched on his cock so many times before.

Cloud gave a groan of sheer disbelief, realizing what Sephiroth wanted without having to be verbally told. Not being able to hear Sephiroth speak dirty words to him somewhat dampened the experience, until Cloud thought that perhaps he could supply them himself.

"... Fuck me..." Cloud whispered, shivering as sharp, glowing cat eyes opened and peered up at him with a predatory light. He rubbed his feet against the tight line running down the center of Sephiroth's back, watching him move on the sheets beneath him. "... I do like it, Seph. I really like it..."

Sephiroth continue to stare up at him, his jaw moving slightly as his tongue worked, hidden deep inside him. He tilted his head a little, letting it jab into and massage against Cloud's sensitive prostate in a different angle.

Cloud grunted, going up onto his elbows to see everything clearly. Sephiroth's long body stretched out behind him on the bed, wriggling rhythmically against the sheets was utterly sexy, but the look of his nose resting against his balls, and his catslit eyes peering up at him was almost frightening... but hypnotically erotic.

Cloud didn't want to fix his eyes up at the ceiling and hide from his lover, not when Sephiroth was so very willing to become up close and personal with him. He wanted to experience it with Sephiroth, and to give him what he wanted right back.

Cloud wrapped his fingers around Sephiroth's wrist, urging his hand to move a little more quickly on his cock, "Don't stop..."

Cloud bit down onto his lips, experiencing the wrenching, emotional teeter-totter in the moments before climax. Sephiroth worked him right, but it was a drawn out thing in the face of something so new, so sensual and yet utterly humiliating. It should have been something nasty, and it was... but in the best way. Sephiroth's tongue was inside him, savoring him. Tongue, teeth, lips...

Sephiroth's eyes blinked up at Cloud once. Then his fine, silver eyebrows slowly turned up... asking without words...

"Seph!" Cloud growled, yanking his hands out of Sephiroth's hair and off of his hands, and instead using them to grip the sheets hard. His hips were very suddenly mobile, and he rubbed and bumped back against Sephiroth's mouth, crying out every moment of it and sparring Sephiroth no detail of how fucking good it was. His cock spit heavy streams of semen against his chest, then rolled over Sephiroth's fist to pool on his groin. Cloud rode it out slowly, feeling the shocks run through his body and for the moment, utterly free.

The tight clenching on his tongue, the surging pulse of Cloud's balls against his nose as he climaxed, and the desperate wriggling of Cloud's hips were more than Sephiroth could have dreamt for. He pressed his erection against the mattress and trembled in surprise as it shot off against the sheets; Cloud's surrender to climax had pulled him along with it. It was a shock, but a pleasant one... he slid his cock through the sticky mess he'd created in his bed, letting Cloud sail back down from the vulnerable, post-climax state.

With a deep gasp of air, Sephiroth pulled his tongue from Cloud. He quickly dropped his mouth down onto his cock, nearly causing Cloud to scream from sensory overload. Sephiroth gently sucked once before letting it slip from his lips, then ran his tongue through the messy load on Cloud's stomach. The taste of semen mixed with the coppery aftertaste of his ass nicely.

Cloud's legs fell down onto the bed, and he braced himself for the lustful attack that was sure to follow... but it never came. Cloud opened one eye and looked down to fine Sephiroth lying against his stomach with his eyes closed.

Cloud frowned, "... Did I do something wrong?"

"Mm-mm..." It took Sephiroth a moment to speak; his tongue and jaw were both tired and sore. He knew where Cloud's confusion was stemming from, but was kind of hoping he wouldn't have to admit it out loud, "... I couldn't hold it."

"What?" Cloud laughed, inadvertently causing Sephiroth's head to bounce slightly on top of his stomach.

"You know what. I busted it already."

"Really?" Cloud dug fingers into Sephiroth's scalp and scratched playfully. "Why?"

"Why," Sephiroth repeated with clear agitation, although his embarrassment was fading fast. "It was fuckin' hot, and I blew my load. You wanna pick on me about it? Go ahead."

"I'm not gonna pick on you!" Cloud giggled, continued to comb his fingers through the long silver hair. "I just feel a little guilty that you did so much work for me. And I didn't have to do anything at all for you..."

"Not keeping score. But if I was, I still win," Sephiroth mumbled peacefully.

"... You stillwant me though, right?" Cloud bit his lip, hoping that his lover wasn't about to fall asleep.

"It's cute how you phrase it so it sounds like I'm the one with the monster sex drive."

"Oh dear, what an inconvenience for you!" Cloud roared. "You're still naked and pressed up against me, you expect me to be done just like that? I have unfinished business!"

"You need an off switch."

"I have one!" Cloud laughed, pressing a kiss onto the top of Sephiroth's head. "You just have to... get up in there and push it."

Sephiroth smiled up at him. "Gimme a minute or two first."

"Ready whenever you are," Cloud said sweetly, but his body was not as patient. His hips were rocking just slightly on the bed, gently grinding against Sephiroth's stomach while his toes wriggled with each upwards push.

The insistent little nuzzle of Cloud's cock definitely helped to replenish Sephiroth's desire. He ran a hand over Cloud's thigh, letting his fingers glide against the grain of tiny blonde hairs found there. Cloud was relaxed enough to allow it without too much giggling, and tensed only when Sephiroth reached between them and gripped his cock again. He slid his palm over it and watched as it gained mass, becoming heavy and solid again in moments. He then traced a finger from the tiny, salty slit at the tip, down to Cloud's balls, and underneath to his opening. It was already slick from his saliva, and he didn't hesitate to push a couple fingers in.

He lifted his head off Cloud's shoulder to gaze up at him. "... Not sore?"

"Not yet, but I wanna be," Cloud told him lustfully, his lips bitten red and his cheeks flushed to match. "Let me help you get ready."

"How're you gonna do that?" Sephiroth asked, moving his fingertips in a slow, teasing echo of what his tongue had been doing minutes prior.

"I wanna..." Cloud stopped himself. Instead of finishing the sentence, he flashed a bright smile that usually had no place on his shy, sex-tinted features. "I don't wanna fucking talk about it. I just wanna do it."

"C'mon," Sephiroth invited, shifting off of Cloud and rolling up onto his elbow.

Cloud followed, rolling over into him and bumping their chests together. He cupped the back of Sephiroth's head and kissed him, although it was more of a taste test than a real kiss. He was probing and careful, almost ready to recoil at the flavor of his own body that was spread across Sephiroth's mouth.

Once he'd experience the taste, he give Sephiroth a firm lick from chin to nose. "... That's not so bad, I guess."

"What? Your ass?" Sephiroth purred, flicking his tongue out to touch Cloud's. "... It tastes so good."

"You liar," Cloud laughed helplessly, bumping his forehead against Sephiroth's. "How can you like that taste so much?"

"In love with the owner, I guess."

That answer wasn't what Cloud expected in a conversation about the taste of his butthole, and he was caught a bit off guard. Romantic love had every right to be present however, because Cloud knew for damn sure he enjoyed every taste Sephiroth's body produced... not for the taste itself, but for the person who it came from. Sweat, semen, tears... even Sephiroth's blood was licked up without a second thought.

Cloud folded both arms around Sephiroth's neck and fell over on top of him, thinking of all the ways he'd like to coax some of those fluids out of his lover. He could already taste sweat on his lips, and licked at him greedily.

Sephiroth was springing up again, and while it wasn't all the way there, it was enough to use. He reached behind Cloud to take himself in hand, and pressed the tip against Cloud to ease inside. Cloud's body jerked, and he arched his back higher to deny Sephiroth entry.

"Not yet," Cloud said with a little growl and scooted back to sit on his calves. He ignored the rest of Sephiroth's body and instead went straight for his groin, parting his lips to give the head a wet, tongue-filled kiss. Cloud then bobbed down, tightening his lips before sucking upwards, dragging the stud in the center of his tongue all along the thick vein beneath the thin, soft skin of Sephiroth's cock.

It was still a bit flaccid, and bent and stretched with the suction of Cloud's lips. He played with that little bit of leeway, using it so his advantage and taking the entire thing down his throat with relative ease. As it filled out and grew, there was a bump against his throat and Cloud gagged slightly, but eased his discomfort by tilting his head and relaxing a bit.

Sephiroth watched in a trance as every lick and suck made his cock tighten more, teasing until he was firm in Cloud's mouth. Sephiroth loved watching him work like this; the shapes his pinkish lips made against his cock were beautiful, and even when Cloud was taking a breath or simply giving his jaw a moment's break, he maintained contact with Sephiroth's cock through his tongue, his hands, or even his cheek like a kitten. Although he'd never received head from anyone else, Sephiroth knew that his boyfriend had to be world fucking class.

"You like doin' that to me?" Sephiroth mumbled, lifting a hand off the bed to bury it in gently swaying, spiky blonde hair.

"Yeah..." Cloud agreed breathlessly, his voice husky and thick as he brushed his wet, warm tongue against the underside. "Hey Seph?... Have you ever wanted to fuck my face?"

Sephiroth blinked rapidly a few times before lifting his eyebrows in disbelief, "Fuck your face?"

Cloud gave an embarrassed laugh, "Well! ... Have you?"

Under different circumstances Sephiroth might have asked if Cloud was serious, or even refused to do such a thing. But Cloud looked gorgeous on his cock, and he was once again thrumming along on a very high note of sexual arousal. He reached down to hold Cloud by the hair, offering plenty of room for Sephiroth to lift his hips off the bed and shove his cock up between his lips.

Cloud seemed shocked that Sephiroth actually did it, and quickly braced both hands outside of Sephiroth's hips on the bed. He worked to open his mouth wide, and breathe evenly through the hard bumping against the back of his throat. Sephiroth made a fist in his hair and jerked Cloud around slightly, forcing his spikes to wave in the air.

Cloud's hands shot up to Sephiroth's forearms, where he hung on for dear life. Sephiroth tore his eyes away from the sight of his cock disappearing into Cloud's mouth, and down the curved line of his delicate spine. He was far too preoccupied in dealing with the barrage of his throat to put any effort into looking sexy while he did it, but his body naturally fell into a seductive arch that Sephiroth adored. Cloud's knees were spread wide behind him, leaving his ass tilted upwards and totally vulnerable.

Cloud looked up at him and began to whine softly, his blunt fingernails digging into Sephiroth's arms. Surprisingly enough his eyes weren't tearing up, but his cheeks and mouth were stained red while a line of sweat fell forward from the back of his neck. Sephiroth jabbed upwards while pushing down on Cloud's head, biting his lip at the sensation of rubbing against the ridges of the roof of Cloud's mouth, and the curve of his throat from the inside.

And then came a sound that wasn't simply a squeal of complaint, but a wail of protest. Sephiroth quickly took his hand off Cloud's head and winced a little as he practically spat out his cock with a flurry of coughing.

He wiped his face with a harsh gasp of air, his voice raw and outraged, "You tried to kill me!"

"Sorry. I thought you said you wanted me to fuck your face," Sephiroth replied innocently.

"... You're getting it!" Cloud declared, crawling forward over him with a dark, determined glare in his eyes.

Sephiroth sat up, reaching forward to grab him by the ass and drag him into his lap. "What am I gonna get?"

Cloud hissed through his teeth, savagely biting kisses onto Sephiroth's lips. He sat up tall on his knees, pushing against Sephiroth's chest and shoulders as he mounted up.

The abuse was slightly feeble, but far more substantial than any force Sephiroth had ever felt from Cloud before. He liked the show of rowdy lust, and allowed him every pinch and pull, and enjoyed the tight heat sinking down onto him. Sephiroth held his ass in both hands, but allowed Cloud to drop down at his own pace, which was slow considering all the roughness from his hands and mouth.

"Ugh," Cloud whined, pulling him into a hug instead of trying to push him down. His eyes shut tight and his face pressed against Sephiroth's neck.

"You okay...?"

In an effort to not lose his rough sex mojo, Cloud gripped Sephiroth's glossy silver hair, and made a fist at the base of his skull. "Yeah... It just feels so damn big right now."

"You got this baby... that cock's all yours. Just take what you want, leave the rest..." Sephiroth encouraged, rubbing both hands down his spine and thighs, and back up again. Even just the head being kissed and consumed by Cloud's tight body was enough, there was no need to show off if he was having a tight day.

"Uh huh," Cloud nodded, squeezing his neck into a rough hug. It softened as he let himself slip down lower, and finally to the point where the curve of his ass sat on Sephiroth's thighs. He breathed heavily, and finally lifted his head to look up at Sephiroth. "... Fuck... fuck..."

Sephiroth kissed the words off of Cloud's lips, and loosened his arms to let him begin to move on top of him. He eventually found his rhythm, letting Sephiroth's cock hit him at a shallow, but damn good angle. Sephiroth had limited movement available to him, but bounced just slightly underneath Cloud, adding enough extra friction to stimulate his arousal pressed between their damp torsos.

With all the humidity they were creating between them, Sephiroth almost regretting turning the heater on so high. Cloud's tan skin was dewy under his palms, and every so often a salty trail of sweat would roll out from under his damp yellow hair. The extra bit of slickness was helping Cloud's situation however, and soon he had his knees digging into the mattress and was plunging all the way down Sephiroth's cock easily.

"Fuck me… hard," Cloud whispered, leaning back and tugging Sephiroth down with him, giving up all pretenses of control and lifting his legs.

Sephiroth followed along gladly, throwing Cloud's legs over his shoulders and taking up control over his sweat slick ass. Cloud looked so delicate underneath him, he almost felt guilty for wanting to see him in any kind of pain at all... but after mentioning that he wanted to be sore, Sephiroth wanted to make sure that he would be. He searched for a fast beat to fuck him, and knew he'd found the right one when Cloud began to shout his name.

Cloud felt the beating throughout his entire body, from the soles of his feet to the nerves on top of his head. He raised his arms above his head and took it, barely able to crack open his eyes enough to watch the angular lines of Sephiroth's hips beating into his own. Part of him wanted to beg for something more gentle, but mostly he just wanted to see Sephiroth like this... the General was hungry for him. Cloud imagined he was feeding some secret part of him, and in return having his body's own needs well nourished.

Cloud almost didn't want to, but it was too much not to grab his own cock and begin to stroke himself off to match Sephiroth's thrusting. Sephiroth's eyes were drawn down to the sight of Cloud working himself, trying to elevate himself to completion. He put his weight on one hand, and used the other to wrap his fingers around Cloud's fisted cock, and slowed him down considerably.

"Seph…?"

"No."

"Seph! It's driving me crazy!" Cloud growled through his teeth.

"Me too," he agreed, licking his mouth as he continued to sink in at exactly the same speed.

"God," Cloud hissed in frustration. This was the sort of thing he'd do in his bed alone as a kid, new to the workings of his body and torturing himself for fun until he lost patience and eagerly squirted his load in moments. But with another person keeping him at an agonizingly hard, deep, but slow pace... he could spend eternity like this, loving and hating every second of it.

His cock was bucking in his hands, weeping all over his and Sephiroth's fingers. His body shook with the desire to just tug it all out, splashing it all onto Sephiroth's chest. He bit his lip, deciding on whether it would be worth it or not, and was desperate enough to try. But then again, appealing to Sephiroth's desires might sooner lead to his own.

"... Come inside," Cloud begged, biting his lip as he used his free hand to rub against the damp skin of Sephiroth's hard stomach and chest, and then over the tattoo on his lean ribcage. "Please..."

"I will," Sephiroth insisted. He was enjoying the sight of Cloud desperately edging himself underneath him, and could go all fucking day if Cloud would let him. It was a beautiful way to spend a Sunday; balls deeps and pounding inside a twitching, sweating, panting Cadet.

Cloud didn't seem to be in control of anything his body was doing; all acts and bravado were gone and Cloud was just Cloud, a young man in love with desperation to feel connected. One white knuckled hand was ever so slowly stroking his rock hard arousal, and the other was tugging uncertainly at his own spikes. His mouth was parted, his tongue was running over his bottom lip repeatedly.

Just when Sephiroth thought he couldn't look more lovely, Cloud loosened the grip on his cock and reluctantly let it go, leaving it rock hard and brightly blushed against his stomach. "Seph... I won't come until you do... I need you to... I can't until you do..."

Sephiroth took pity on that. He hunkered down just a bit, and let his eyes drink in all the details of Cloud's face, eyelashes, his blush, his sweat. He kissed him with his eyes open, looking at his lashes and all the intricacies of his blue irises up close... all the while with his cock pushing into his ass, feeling the hot, tight core of his body squeeze around him and pull him in deeper, swallowing him down.

All it took was a few strokes at a slightly more frantic pace to make Sephiroth spill it inside of Cloud. It was a biologically unnecessary orgasm that was long and drawn out, and he felt every second pass by like a minute as his cock was drained by the tight, slick heat.

Cloud reached for himself and immediately shot it out, sent into his own climax from simply watching Sephiroth experience his. The look on his face was enough, but the smell of his sweat and the feel of his body pulsing inside him was something Cloud craved, and relished when he finally got it.

Sephiroth's stomach and hips were streaked with Cloud's semen by the time they were done, and he gratefully fell on top of him in a heap. They laid panting together, cooling off and catching their breath.

"... Do you ever think back to shit you said during sex and get embarrassed?" Cloud asked suddenly.

"No. And neither should you."

Cloud hummed, and it was edged with self doubt.

"Cloud... I'll be thinkin' back and jerkin' off about that one for weeks to come," Sephiroth confided, giving his shoulder a kiss.

"You just get off on my embarrassment!" Cloud giggled, brushing his messy, half dry fringe off of his forehead with a sigh. "Awkward sex on the weekends is all I'm good for."

"No, baby..." Sephiroth's forehead wrinkled just slightly, "... I missed you this week."

"You were cold up there at the Crater?" Cloud guessed with a smile.

"I just needed you," Sephiroth explained with a small shrug, running his palm up and down Cloud's bicep. He couldn't help but think back to Vincent's anecdote about his childhood self waiting all week just to see Vincent on Saturday. He'd been able to block out and suppress a lot of things, but not the feeling of Sunday morning, knowing he had a full week until he could see Vincent again... if he saw him at all.

History did tend to repeat itself, but he refused to be trapped in a cycle of monotony and self medication punctuated only by intense, but brief bursts of happiness.

"What's wrong?" Cloud asked, watching his lover's expression slowly set into serious lines.

"Just thinkin'," Sephiroth said distantly. "... I don't wanna give you back to school, tonight. Hurry up and get into SOLDIER so you can move in here with me."

"Oh, okay," Cloud rolled his eyes. "Then in a month you'll be kicking me out."

"Why do you always say shit like that?"

"... Seph, you only see me a few hours each week... sometimes not even that. What if you..." Cloud stopped, closing his eyes and squeezing Sephiroth's neck into a sudden hug. "If I actually come to live here, please promise you won't get sick of me."

"You don't get it. I wish I could be sick of you," Sephiroth said against Cloud's shoulder. "I can't ever seem to get enough of you. I look forward to bein'... normal. Just finally bein' able to relax and live our lives knowin' we're both right here, and we're not goin' anywhere."

Cloud had spent the better part of the year trying to be cavalier about his feelings, about his desire to be with Sephiroth every waking minute just so he wouldn't sound like a complete fucking lovesick idiot. And now Sephiroth echoed that feeling and really meant it... but he certainly didn't sound like an idiot, he sounded like a grown man with a desire to stabilize his life.

That made Cloud feel elated, important, and also nearly sick with fright. Was he enough for Sephiroth? Would he someday wake up and decide that he didn't want Sephiroth? Was there some sort of horrible glitch in their relationship waiting to be uncovered, some deal breaker from the past or future that was currently unforeseeable?

It was the risk everyone took when loving somebody. Nothing was safe, or a guarantee when deciding to become someone's family. Cloud knew that was what Sephiroth needed most, and he had to be strong enough to be that for him. Otherwise, what was Cloud wasting Sephiroth's time for?

His eyes were wet and his heart was thumping hard, but he did his best to sound calm and smooth and mature. "... I don't' live here yet, but I'm already here. I'm not going anywhere, I'm going to make it into SOLDIER and be with you for good. I'm happy here. I love you."

"Love you, too." Sephiroth moved Cloud's hair off of his face and kissed him, wanting to swallow him and be a permanent part of him. It was an odd thought, but it was one that Sephiroth hoped Cloud felt too, even if it wasn't something that could ever be spoken aloud, in any language.

"... Seph?" Cloud finally asked, his eyebrows turning up.

"Hm?"

"... Could you please get off of me, dear?"

With a burst of laughter, Sephiroth realized that poor Cloud's ankles were still on his shoulders. He quickly put his weight on his hands and lifted his hips up off of Cloud's thighs. He moved his mouth across Cloud's jaw, kissing him apologetically as they shifted out of each other's way.

Cloud's legs trembled as he lowered them, and rolled over with a withering sigh. "God... Sometimes you hit it just right that I get absolutely knifed by those fucking bony hips of yours."

"I'm doin' the best I can with your fuckin' bony ass," Sephiroth retorted, scooping a dirty towel off of the floor and cleaning the mess on his stomach, and then in between Cloud's thighs.

"Yeah, whatever. Shut up and hold me!" Cloud demanded, pulling and pushing on Sephiroth's limbs until they cradled him just right.

"You're such a brat right now. That wasn't awkward sex, it was bratty sex," Sephiroth laughed, but seemed very content to grant Cloud's wishes and curl against the curve of his back.

"Well, I got woken up out of a dead sleep and then jabbed with heavy bones for an hour!" Cloud trailed off before he shot a brilliant smile over his shoulder.

Sephiroth smiled back at him, "Could you live with that?"

"Most definitely," Cloud sighed, eyes turning to the windows, where the morning sky was becoming a crisp, wintery shade of blue. The warmth of Sephiroth's embrace under the covers was nice, but the cold outside world seemed even more inviting. "... Seph, let's not sleep the day away. Can we go get breakfast?"

"... Okay," He said, although he didn't sound entirely enthused about the idea of getting up.

"Then after we eat, could we... maybe get some retail therapy?" Cloud ventured.

"You want somethin'?" Sephiroth mumbled.

Cloud fiddled with a loose string in the blanket. "I thought maybe... if you want... we could get some fun stuff to play with tonight."

Sephiroth's ears perked at that, "What kind of stuff?"

"Have you ever baked bread?"

"... No."

"I really like to; my mom and I would mix up recipes all the time and it turns out really good. Bread ovens aren't very expensive, they take up practically no space, and the bread takes all day to bake but you come home to it and the smell is just heavenly... I think you'd like it. Or at least I think you'd like eating it." Cloud looked over his shoulder to try to gauge Sephiroth's expression, but found it somewhat blank. "... And if we're somewhere to buy a bread oven, you think we could get a tea kettle? I don't like coffee that much - I mean I drink it, but tea is a lot nicer. And maybe we could get some cups that are a bit smaller. All of your cups are like bowls with handles on them - "

"You're tellin' me you wanna go shop for kitchen shit?" Sephiroth asked in disbelief.

"... Does that sound fun?" Cloud asked, suddenly feeling stupid.

"Gadgets, dishes, decorating, and you making me food?" Sephiroth pushed his hand into Cloud's hair and rustled it affectionately. "That sounds like a fuckin' blast. Let's take a shower and go."

"Where to?" Cloud laughed, indignantly trying to fix his hair once Sephiroth released it, although he was sporting bed head compounded by sex muss and the effort was lost.

"You've never been to Ikea," Sephiroth presumed.

"The car dealership?"

It was not a car dealership. It was Sephiroth's version of Disneyland, and Cloud was just as enchanted by it. The appliances, unusual furniture, interior decoration studio and fried food cafe were all great, but the best part about it was that they were purchasing things for their home.

As they strolled through the aisles of the warehouse, they passed other couples of all genders, types and ages, and it made Cloud nearly delirious to know that he was there with Sephiroth... who loved him... and who was willing to forfeit his credit card to prove it. Cloud was blissed out on the domestic partnership of it all, and couldn't keep his hands off of Sephiroth. He held Sephiroth's hand, hung onto his back pockets, hugged him from behind as he pushed the cart, and snuggled up against his side while considering merchandise. He knew he was probably making a big PDA spectacle of himself, but couldn't bring himself to care.

By the time they returned home, it was too late to try out the bread machine. But they were able to test out their new cake-pop maker, pizza rack, and Cloud's new electric tea kettle.

They even got things for a huge empty room across the loft that would serve as Cloud's personal nook; a place for him to decorate and keep his things the way he liked them. Of course, his movies would be integrated into Sephiroth's collection, pictures would be on the walls and tabletops all over the apartment, and he was welcome to purchase things to bring home and establish his identity in Sephiroth's loft.

It was gracious of Sephiroth to offer him his own space where he could close a door if he needed to. He agreed with Sephiroth that their bedroom was to be kept Zen, though - no clutter or pictures, only the bed, the television that was mostly hidden away and rarely used, and the big, gorgeous windowscape. Some of the best sleep Cloud had ever gotten in his life was in that bed, and he wouldn't change a thing about it - he'd keep his junky clutter in his own room.

Cloud didn't like the term "nook" though, because it implied he was an old lady who would be sewing in it. Cloud preferred to call it a man cave.

After visiting Ikea, Cloud's "man cave" now consisted of a circular yellow shag carpet, and a big box that contained pieces to a shelf that Cloud might eventually construct. If he ever got around to it, it would be perfect to house his record player and collection.

It wasn't much, but it was the first step to Cloud building a nest in Sephiroth's sprawling tree of an apartment.

Sephiroth liked the rug. He liked the shelf. He liked all the new shit in his kitchen. And while he really didn't care for tea... Sephiroth especially liked the sight of Cloud's kettle taking up a little bit of space on the counter underneath his coffee brewer.

It would serve as an everyday reminder that this wasn't just a weekend kind of love.

Chapter Images!

Babyroth - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/#/d4rfsp3

Shopping for kitchen shit - http://owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/#/d4rfskl

A/N

1 - Hey guys! What's going on with you?

2 - I'm a full time digital art student now, so I'm busy like, coding web pages and doing shit I don't really want to do. I'm sure most of us are going to school, and it's not so much a time constraint, but a fucking brain cell constraint. I only have so much juice, then I'm done and left in a mindless trance, drooling and watching Terminator and Road Warrior and 300. Plus there's work, but there's always been work so that's no excuse. I find time for my small creative outlets, just not much, which makes for slow updates. I'm sorry about that, but I try to make it worth the wait.

3 - Thanks a lot for all the encouraging reviews left during the little hiatus between this chapter and the last one. It really helps to see, and makes me remember how magically delicious story writing is for myself, and for readers who enjoy this brand of idiocy. It's something I enjoy doing, and I'm glad it's something you enjoy reading. Thanks for your patience and your fun vibes.

4 - DO I WIN ANYTHING FOR WRITING A 1500 WORD RIMMING SCENE? Or is that the sort of thing people will only love me for after I'm dead?


	29. Cloud Danger Strife

Sephiroth had the weirdest hangover.

He couldn't recall a time in his entire life when he'd felt so invisible and alone. Even when he was near death from a wound, infection, or something the lab had done to him on purpose, he still found some supernatural drive within himself to carry on.

Nothing ever immobilized Sephiroth.

He wasn't sure if he was awake or not. Time was marked by the drifting in and out of dreamless sleep, broken up by frantic moments where he was made aware of the fact that he couldn't move. After fighting with himself to get a grip, he'd slip back into the same uneasy coma.

He was waiting. Just waiting.

Eventually he was able to move his fingers a bit, and soon thereafter he opened his eyes.

It was dark. Sephiroth reached out and felt around for his cell phone, another person, anything at all. The effort it took to move that little bit sent him propelling back into darkness.

He didn't dream about anything. It made sleep restless and lonely.

He didn't want to sleep. He craved color, light, sound, stimuli. He wanted to laugh at something, get pissed about something, hit something, kiss someone. He needed to talk to somebody, but wasn't sure if he had anything to say.

Sephiroth just had a desire to be.

This was the weirdest hangover ever.

Sephiroth wondered if he was drugged in the lab. He doubted it; being in the lab brought about some very specific senses and feelings. There was no disinfected medicinal odor, no whirring vibration of power generators and machinery, no distant cries for help or doctors' feet shuffling around.

There was an odd feeling that this was somehow his own fault, and he decided that he was never drinking again. He wanted to use the bathroom, take a shower, and get into bed under a blanket.

Was he cold? He was very cold. As a matter of fact, he didn't even know how he'd slept for so long in this fucking cold. He imagined that he was on the freezing bathroom tiles. And if he was hungover, that meant Cloud was probably somewhere in the apartment fast asleep and bundled up without turning the heat on.

That might make sense.

But did they go out last night? He didn't remember what he'd been doing the night before. Or the day before... or even the day before that. He couldn't even recall what day it was now.

That didn't make sense.

Sephiroth would never consume enough alcohol to get to this stage. It was possible if he tried to keep up with Cloud, because that boy could drink almost anyone into the emergency room, but Sephiroth always paced himself. He was only twenty-three, but he had too much responsibility to let himself become shit face drunk.

"Hey?..." Sephiroth called, lifting his head off the wet floor, which was probably the worst idea he'd ever had. The most demonic pain he'd ever felt stole his breath until he literally saw flashing lights behind his eyelids. They pulsed in time with his racing heartbeat, and Sephiroth prayed that he would just drop dead.

'I'm never drinkin' again,' he thought as he withered tightly into the fetal position he'd woken up in. Even the echo of his own voice bouncing around the room added to the torture, and the stench of ice and cold threatened to make him heave.

Sephiroth paused. His bathroom didn't echo, and it didn't smell like ice.

He was outside somewhere. This wasn't just a hangover, this was dangerous.

The pain wasn't so bad now that he was expecting it, and he began the task of getting up off of his side. Tight, new leather creaked along with his movement, and with a sweeping brush of his palms, he felt down his frame and found harnesses, belts, and unfamiliar zippers. It was a one piece leather fucking cat suit.

"Fuck me," Sephiroth groaned as he moved up onto his knees, his brain now on red alert. He tried to light an organic match in his palm, but was so weak he couldn't even manage simple magic.

It wasn't normal to wake up in a dark, echoey place outside, weak to the point of death and dressed like Rob Halford. This had all the makings of a horror movie; he almost wanted to check to make sure a stranger's lips weren't grafted to his asshole.

He touched his butt to just to be sure. All clear.

He clumsily batted his hand around on the ground nearby, blindly searching for Masamune, his cell phone, another person, anything at all. There was nothing but the wet smack of his hand hitting a bit of shallow water.

More determined to figure out where he was, he managed to stand up. Just walking was a huge challenge, and he stumbled down to his knees several times before he got his footing right. His legs felt like rubber, and it was almost as though his feet were too big for his body.

Using the wall as a crutch, Sephiroth shuffled along in search of an exit. It taxed so much of his energy that he slid down onto his knees over and over. But he forced himself to keep going, the desire to escape propelled his efforts along, as slow and labored as they were.

He slid down to his knees once more, completely exhausted. He tumbled into another bout of unconscious restoration, and fought the entire time to wake back up.

He didn't know how long he remained there like that. He wasn't even sure when he'd opened his eyes, but a gentle stream of light cut through the dark, and illuminated the space.

Snow and ice glittered on the ground and sparkled up the steep walls. Sephiroth was overwhelmed at the sudden illumination, and squinted a little as his eyes followed the path of light until he was looking straight up.

He was crumpled at the bottom of the Northern fucking Crater.

Not even in hangover logic could that make sense.

He glanced down at himself, and realized he wasn't wearing some leather daddy costume - it was a one piece, lightweight battle suit. He'd never seen it before, but it was just his taste.

At least he looked good.

Sephiroth pushed off of the wall to his feet, and carefully walked to the center of the Crater, searching for any sign of another person. He refused to call out 'hello' like a horror movie vixen about to get thrashed. Instead he opted for a manly sound; he coughed and cleared his sinuses, and spat it at the ground. It echoed around a bit, not sounding very manly at all. It sounded young and scared, but fortunately no other sounds followed.

He wondered where his phone was. He looked around on the ground, hoping for footprints on the icy cave floor, but didn't spot any. An unwelcome blast of arctic wind rushed down from the mouth of the Crater, sending a million goosebumps down the back of Sephiroth's neck. He rubbed them away, and then paused.

He was touching the back of his neck. There was no curtain of hair in the way.

Sephiroth ran his fingers over his scalp over and over, finding no strands longer than a quarter inch. For a moment he didn't even feel the cold anymore, and a helpless, brief cry escaped him.

He felt something on his scalp, and with a sharp tug he pulled it off. It was a piece of chewed up gum, frozen solid and stuck in what little hair he had left.

There had to have been some sort of fight, some sort of mission... he'd been beaten by someone. And upon his vulnerability, they had taken it upon themselves to buzz his head. It was an attempt at humiliation, a chance to strip him of his identity.

Sephiroth was consumed by a fury like he'd never known.

He gave himself permission to hunt down whoever had done this to him like a fucking dog. When he found them, he wasn't going to hold himself morally responsible for whatever he was going to do.

He wanted more than they took, he'd have revenge for this multiplied by a million. He laughed a little as both hands brushed the short hair dusting his skull.

He was going to find them, and eatthem alive. He would take a bite out of their face and fuck the hole it left behind. He was going to round up Zack and Angeal and Genesis and get medieval on the ass of whoever had done this.

Sephiroth then became suspicious of those people in particular. Who else could have triumphed over him but one of his first class comrades? It was possible... After all, taking his hair was such a Genesis thing to do.

It had to be Genesis... Sephiroth never liked him that much anyway, and would have no problem shredding his shallow, jealous, perverted, self righteous, condescending ass. Sephiroth would have more mercy on ruthless Wutain spies than he would on someone he had grown to trust, who then turned out to be a traitor.

He was too furious to feel weakness or pain anymore. It was a relief to feel more like himself again, and with a series of ricochets off of the Crater's ice shelves, he was out of the pit in moments. Even though he'd found enough strength to get out, his landing was horribly botched and unbalanced, and he stumbled to his sore knees. But he was out and that was all that mattered to him, so he scrambled up to his feet and tried to regain some composure as he marched toward the Northern Crater Base.

"Hey there!" A militant voice shouted, and Sephiroth bristled at the thought of another person seeing him in this vulnerable, hairless state.

Sephiroth squinted at the approaching figure. Nighttime at the Crater had an oddly luminescent quality when the moon was reflecting off the snow, and he could see that it was the exact same grunt that was always guarding the mouth of the cave. Somehow the guy had become a real moose since Sephiroth had left the Crater base. He was huge. Like really, really fucking huge.

He looked up at the grunt for a moment in startled wonder, before snorting a little as he began to make his way toward the base. He didn't mean to be rude, but he couldn't spare the time to greet someone when he'd woken up mentally raped.

"Hold it!" The grunt called.

Sephiroth stopped to glare up at the brazen infantryman. He didn't care what kind of insoles this dude was wearing, nobody in the army talked to him like that. It occurred to Sephiroth that he might not have been recognized because of his hair, and that made him even more indignant.

The guard had the nerve to have his hand on the handle of his machine gun, ready to draw the weapon. "What are you doing alone out here? How'd you get here?"

"You're about to help me figure that out," Sephiroth barked up at him. "I wanna know everything you know. What have you seen here tonight? Who came up out of that pit before me?"

"Does your dad work here?"

Sephiroth couldn't school his features before they twisted up into a confused scowl. He didn't answer to army, especially a bizarre question like that. And if this guy had a recognition problem just because his hair was shorter, he was about to become very embarrassed.

Sephiroth tried to maintain some composure, "I am your General."

"... That's enough. We're going inside," The guard readied his weapon, "Put your hands up where I can see them, and start to move towards the base."

Sephiroth remained where he was. "... You're makin' a huge mistake right now."

The guard dislodged the safety on his rifle and pointed it at Sephiroth's lower body. "Kid... if you won't follow instructions, I'll be forced to disable you."

Sephiroth snapped the grunt's spinal cord.

Strictly speaking it was not necessary, but he was cold and tired and hungry and he didn't like when people pointed guns at him. And for all he knew, this asshole was working for whoever had left him for dead in the Crater. He couldn't trust anyone until he figured out what was going on.

He'd been well within his rights... the man refused to stand down...

After a moment of gazing down at the broken body of a member of his own army and trying to justify it to himself... Sephiroth nearly wept. The adrenaline of the confrontation eased away, and his rage was replaced by horrible guilt.

He'd just killed someone out of frustration. How could he have done that?

Sephiroth crouched down over the man's body and unhooked the radio from his belt. He needed to make a call to the Crater base's coroner, and then hopefully get the base's Lieutenant to come and possibly shed light on his current situation. He'd stay by the body until it was all taken care of properly.

Sephiroth paused, and tilted his head slightly as he looked at the enormous radio in his hands. It was so big that he needed both hands to hold onto it. While pondering the odd size of the thing, he glanced down at the nighttime shadows that he and the dead guard made in the snow.

He looked down at his body. His very small, very skinny, very adolescent body.

"This is the weirdest hangover..." Sephiroth breathed thoughtfully, slowly replacing the radio back into the grunt's belt. "Okay... Alright."

He would make this look like an accident.

With two tiny hands, Sephiroth grabbed the dead guard's boot. He groaned a little as he dragged his heavy ass down into the Crater.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"I'm not going to make a long speech," Coach Dunn began, which informed the class that this was going to be a long speech indeed. "But starting today, we're taking the rubbers off."

The Intermediate Sword Training class erupted with boyish laughter.

"Shut up," Coach Dunn ordered, and they did. When they were totally silent, he continued. "We're taking the rubber guards off the swords."

Cloud sat cross-legged on the grass with his Sword Training class, eager and amazed when the instructor unsheathed one of the practice swords, which was free of the thin rubber lining that had previously hugged the sharp edge of the blade. It felt a little childish, but certainly hurt to get stricken with. Cloud had often been left with nasty red bands bruised underneath his skin from sword slaps.

That was nothing compared to what the sharp edge of an actual steel blade could do, as the coach demonstrated by tossing the sheath into the air and splitting the thing in two. Like a true SOLDIER, he even ended with a cool pose.

Cloud refrained from clapping as though he were in a magic show, but it took effort. He loved watching his teachers perform tricks, and his adoration for SOLDIERs did not stop at Sephiroth or Zack. Any man in that uniform held a little piece of Cloud's heart, especially his instructors.

Coach Dunn continued, "With the safety rubber in place I was a little bit lenient about the body hits. But starting today any hit is going to result in an injury, and this is when cadets get injured the most. The next month or so is going to be the most dangerous of your career here at the Academy. You're all going to get cut, I can guarantee that. If you're hurt badly and miss a substantial amount of class time, I may decide that you need to repeat the course. If you have to repeat, you can't qualify for the SOLDIER exam in August."

One of his classmates let out a long sigh at that, and Cloud would have joined in if he could find the breath. Any time his participation in the SOLDIER exam was threatened, it felt like the air was physically knocked out of him.

Coach Dunn openly smiled at how cute and wide-eyed his class became, but it registered as a cruel smirk on his stony features. "Has anyone spent a weekend with a General yet?"

Cloud's hand shot up very confidently.

The coach gave him a doubtful look. "I'm talking about a weekend training seminar."

"Whoops," Cloud blurted, and yanked his hand back down.

The rest of the class remained silent.

"I have some great news for you guys. I pulled some strings and my intermediate sword training students are being offered first dibs on a seminar this weekend with Angeal Hewley. It'll be a wilderness retreat away from the city to hone sword combat skills. It's an immeasurable privilege."

Cloud shrank down a few inches. Surely this immeasurable privilege would be optional... he and Sephiroth had made plans to go the Dragon Museum.

It was the biggest and most complete collection of dragon information in the world. They had a new exhibit about prehistoric dragon mating, where the bones were all set up like they were fucking - which was Sephiroth's main reason for wanting to go. Cloud wanted to go for the baby dragon petting zoo, where he planned on giving hundreds of kisses to the kitten-sized domesticated babies. He even convinced Sephiroth to allow him to put one on top of his head and take a picture - in exchange for a sexual promise.

Cloud didn't know what he was going to have to do, yet... but was perfectly willing to find out. He'd be damned if he was going to pass that up to spend the weekend with his stinky classmates in the fucking woods.

"If you choose to pass up this seminar, I will not understand why. So in order to make me understand, you'll have a five page written assignment due Monday telling me why you didn't attend. Of course, I will expect the university caliber writing that's required of you from your academic classes, as well as external references and documentation of where you're going to be. And since your classmates will be out on Monday, you will learn a new series of maneuvers to demonstrate to the class on Tuesday, which should take you roughly all weekend to master. Don't be stupid. Just sign up."

The sheet went from boy to boy, and all of them committed themselves to a weekend of torture. With a heavy heart, Cloud also added his name to the list.

Their trip to the Dragon Museum would have to be postponed. It was only Tuesday...so it'd be two full weeks until he would see Sephiroth again. Provided he didn't have a mission, of course. Faced with so much time away from his beloved, Cloud felt his vision blur with tears.

No, no, no. Over dramatizing shit and making himself cry was a lot like thinking sexy porno thoughts and ejaculating prematurely - he had to get better control over what his mind and body did to embarrass him.

Cloud still couldn't do much about his sexual performance, but he felt lucky that he'd never had a huge crybaby meltdown at school. He wanted to keep it that way, so he completely emptied his brain until he was a shell of a person, refusing to allow himself to even finish a single thought.

Coach Dunn took the signup sheet and ensured everyone had enlisted, and then continued on with the day's lesson, "In order to prepare you for General Hewley's seminar, we need to get used to training on ordinary steel, and wounds are expected... but major injuries cost you class time. I don't like blaming the victim for a wound, but if you can't defend yourself against another student, what hope do you have against someone who wants to kill you? On that note, if you injure one of your classmates because you were fucking around, it's also up to me to decide whether you can handle the responsibilities that a swordsman in this army carries. Nobody takes the SOLDIER exam without passing my class, and I make it my personal business to keep douchebags out."

Cloud really respected Coach Dunn, but he also really hated him in that moment. He didn't need to be preached to about the lack of safety rubber, he needed to fight and get angry before he started to cry.

"Come and take a weapon, then get into your positions," Cloud's coach finally ordered.

Cloud clamored to be first in line, and peeked hesitantly up at his instructor before grabbing one of the sheathed swords from the rack. He almost expected to be called out as an imposter; surely he wasn't to be trusted with a real fucking steel sword.

But instead of squashing him back, Coach Dunn patted him on the shoulder and gently pushed him out of the way to allow the rest of the class to collect a weapon. With higher spirits, Cloud pranced back to his usual spot on the grass, not daring to unsheathe the sword until he was instructed to do so.

They went through their warm up drills perfectly, and then it was time for one-on-one training. The sparring sessions were slow and hesitant but they sounded beautiful, all sharp clangs of metal instead of dull thunks of rubber edges. Cloud watched his classmates fight with wide eyes, amazed at the small, bloody cuts people were receiving from each other.

"Cloud, you're up," Coach Dunn finally said.

Unable to suppress an eager grin, he stood up and darted to the clearing. His excitement deflated a little when nobody offered to join in to practice with him.

Unbeknownst to Cloud, sword fighting wasn't like other sports. People who were good at it often needed to be told how good they were. And nobody had yet told Cloud that he was getting really mother fucking good at it.

In order to keep him humble for as long as possible, Coach Dunn said nothing to Cloud about his emerging talent. Mostly it was due to the fact that his attacks came from such low, odd angles, but also because Cloud was by far the lightest and quickest in the class. The other cadets sure as hell weren't going to compliment him, either.

Cloud knew he did rather well against his classmates, but was beautifully ignorant to how terrifying he appeared to them holding a sword with no rubber safety guards.

Nobody made eye contact with him as he stood waiting for a sparring partner. Cloud's narrow shoulders slumped, and he loosely swung the dangerous weapon like a child. "C'mon guys, don't leave me hanging. Won't somebody fight me? Jesse? Taylor?"

Jesse became interested in his boot laces, and Taylor made an indignant noise of pure disgust at the idea. Other than that nobody moved a muscle.

"Taylor, go fight him," Coach Dunn finally ordered.

Taylor was a tank, the sort of guy that managed to remain husky despite constant physical exercise and activity. Some people were just lucky like that, but the drawback was that he was very slow. During a swordfight, he was like a slow moving wall. Very predictable, but nearly impossible to stop.

His size didn't scare Cloud; he thought Taylor was cute. He had deep dimples when he smiled, and pretty hazel eyes that were always downcast and shy. Cloud was willing to bet he was going to get a boost of confidence from a girl someday soon, and would mature into a really sexy man.

"Hey handsome!" Cloud flirted, trying to overcome Taylor's reluctance to spar with him.

Taylor did not return the smile as he approached Cloud.

"Okay fine, be that way," Cloud huffed and took his position.

Taylor's only response was to take his own position and wait until the whistle to begin. Once the whistle came, Cloud became a yellow, spiky blur. Taylor never had a chance.

It was like a puzzle piece had been put into place. Cloud finally got it.

Magic was frustrating, guns were cumbersome, and hand-to-hand was something that Cloud simply lacked the physical strength to excel at. Sword fighting was what nature had intended for him, and Cloud knew it all along. But now that his instrument was a deadly weapon and not a neutered, safety guarded toy, his classmates were taking him seriously.

It felt marvelous.

At the end of the fight, Taylor was bleeding in three places. They were merely scrapes, but if Cloud were of the mind... he could have killed him. He really could have!

Cloud was so excited that he couldn't stop bouncing in place. His voice was shaking a bit, but he managed to call out to his instructor, "Can I-I go again? Please?"

"If you want," Coach Dunn shrugged indifferently, although he was very proud. It was nice to know that the potential he thought he saw in the smallest cadet was real, and not a mistake of judgment on his part in hopes that Sephiroth's boyfriend would amount to something. He was relieved to be able to report good things to his long time friend. "Why don't you just play opponent to everyone in the class for a round? Or until you get tired."

"I won't get tired!" Cloud's voice cracked at an octave reserved for teenage girls. Usually it would have earned him some laughter from his classmates, but in that moment it merely cemented a terrifying image of gleeful, murderous enthusiasm.

Danger was now Cloud's middle name. Actually it was Duffy, but nobody had to know that since they both began with the same letter.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Sephiroth was in a horrible mood and didn't particularly feel like talking, but he answered Cloud's daily post-school phone call anyway. "Hm."

"Listen!" Cloud squawked, and proceeded to chatter away.

Sephiroth couldn't understand a word he was saying, of course. But Cloud sounded excited and happy, and he found himself smiling for the first time that day. Zack had brought him some dinner, so he unwrapped his tacos and began to eat while they were still warm.

Cloud spoke for five solid minutes before he gave Sephiroth any room for a response. "... So?"

"What?" Sephiroth asked, sucking unidentifiable taco meat from between his teeth.

Cloud gave a loud sigh. "You weren't even listening!"

"I was listenin'. You did that thing where you talk really fast and your accent swallows your words."

"Oh, sorry!" Cloud laughed. "So am I allowed to tell you all over again, then?"

Sephiroth couldn't help but grin at the positive energy that radiated over the phone. "Sure, just slow it down for me a little."

Slowly, and with pauses for breath, Cloud retold what happened in his sword training class.

"So... what does that mean?" Sephiroth asked.

Cloud danced around an answer, feeling a little shy and unsure how to put it. "I dunno! I guess I'm getting better at sword fighting! Coach Dunn said that like... that I'm the best in class or something."

"So you're Jake's class pet, now?"

Cloud gave an embarrassed warble at the fact that Sephiroth knew his coach on a first name basis. "No I'm not his class fucking pet, I'm saying that he thought I was good. And I fought every kid in class, and I fucked them all up. All of them! Nobody could touch me, Seph. It felt like... like I was way better than anyone else! It felt really, really good!"

Years in the upper ranks had filled Sephiroth with a certain brand of contempt for rookie swordsmen when they began to get cocky. That cockiness always led to an early death, Sephiroth witnessed it over and over again.

But this was Cloud, and Sephiroth loved him and wanted to be a source of support in his life and all that shit. Cloud's ambition was to become a SOLDIER, and he was tenacious and willful and spoiled rotten, so one way or another he would see that goal. If for no other reason than because Sephiroth didn't want him to.

Sephiroth rarely got what he wanted in life, and if he did it came with a severe downside.

Pro : He was incredibly in love with Cloud Strife.

Con : Like many SOLDIERs, Cloud Strife would probably not live to see twenty.

These bitter thoughts made Sephiroth physically ill, and it all translated to an arrogant sigh, "... Best in your intermediate class? It's a start. I want you to be the best at that whole fuckin' school. You hear me?"

"Yes Sir!" Cloud agreed amicably.

"So you're gonna be with Angeal this weekend?"

"Yep!" Cloud nodded. "I'm so excited! I don't wanna do anything else but train on steel, I love it!"

"Guess I won't be seein' you then."

"I'm sorry, Seph... I'll be back Sunday night. Do you think I could spend the night?"

Although he wanted Cloud to stay over, he also wanted to punish him for being busy, for making him worry, for making him feel anything at all. It was a petty emotion without a real name, but it was one Sephiroth couldn't control, "No. Monday I'll be in early."

"Nooo!" Cloud sighed regrettably. "Don't you have any time at all this week? Maybe at night?"

"I gotta sleep at some point."

"O-oh, of course! I understand..." Cloud then floundered a bit under an extended silence. "... Are you mad at me, dear?"

Sephiroth stretched in his chair and then slid down until his chin was resting on his collar bone. He looked like a moody teenager, and felt just as stupid for making such a big deal out of nothing. "Sorry baby, I'm in a bad mood. You can stay Sunday night if you want to."

"You hate when I'm there and you have to work," Cloud reminded him. "I make you late every single time."

"You're movin' in this summer. I'm gonna have to get over you and go to work every day. Might as well start gettin' used to it, right?"

Cloud smiled at that and hesitantly agreed, "I guess that's true."

Sephiroth felt even guiltier for putting that hesitance in his lover's voice. He wasn't sure what the reverse of nostalgia was, but he was feeling it, and he felt stupid for it."I have some time tomorrow night if you wanna hang out after school. Wanna go get some food or somethin'?"

"I have work at the store tomorrow, remember?"

"Oh yeah..." Sephiroth swallowed a lump in his throat, imagining a day in the future when Cloud might actually meet that early death that waited for new SOLDIERs. Was he going to look back on this moment as a failed opportunity to be with him? He couldn't live with that kind of regret. "Is it alright if I come see you at work?"

"Sure! But it'll be boring for you... you'll just be sitting there watching me clean stuff."

"You don't wear nothin' but underwear, though?"

"Well... yeah, I dress slutty."

"I'll be there after I'm done with work tomorrow."

Cloud giggled, "You really wanna do that?"

"Sure. Why don't you sleep over tomorrow, too? I can take you to school on my way to work."

"Okay!" Cloud agreed, slightly weary of his lover's sudden mood swing. "... So you feel better about missing our weekend?"

Sephiroth felt a pang of dread again, but shook it off and sat up straight in his chair. "You need the time with Angeal. I wanna hear good things about you. I want you to kick his big, fat ass."

Cloud laughed merrily, "I'll try! Will you miss me?"

Sephiroth paused. It felt like the more he tried to squash this dreadful feeling of doom, the more intense it bit back. He wanted to talk to Cloud about it, but he wasn't used to that kind of shit. He usually let Cloud chatter away about his feelings and happenings, and let the heavy stuff dissipate on its own. Any feeling, any pain, any thought would go away if it could be ignored long enough.

Sephiroth didn't want to scare him, but ventured toward actual communication. "Cloud..."

"What?"

"I feel weird."

Cloud was instantly concerned, "Weird? Why? You sick?"

"Don't get worked up. I just feel weird."

Cloud gave him a long coo of pity, "My poor dear. Tell me what's wrong."

Sephiroth slumped further in his chair, unsure of how to give a voice to his odd feelings, or even if he wanted to. "Do you ever feel like somethin' bad is about to happen?"

"Like what?"

"I dunno," Sephiroth lowered his voice. It was useless against the monitoring devices placed throughout the Shin-Ra building, but it was an involuntary effort. "I guess I'm just thinkin' a lot about, like... bad stuff that could happen to you or me. Just feel like somethin's gonna happen soon."

Cloud matched his quiet tone with a whisper, "Do you feel like a lot of good things have happened lately?"

"I've never been happy like this before," He mumbled, not sounding very happy at all.

Cloud found his pouting, moody lover precious, but kept his voice as serious as he could, "You're being stupid."

"I'm not. Everything balances itself out like that. It has to, that's how shit works."

"Sephiroth, nothing bad is going to happen," Cloud told him. "And if it does, we'll deal together. We'll always have each other, right?"

"What if one of us dies?" Sephiroth asked, although his concern was more about Cloud's untimely demise rather than his own. "I hate this heavy shit. But what if somethin' happened to me? What if it happened like, tomorrow?"

Cloud took a few moments to respond. "... It's not an 'if'. We're both going to die someday. Whoever goes first will just have to wait in the Lifestream, and whoever survives will just have to go on living. And when we see each other again, it'll feel like hardly a moment had gone by. Then we won't have to work anymore, and will have nowhere to be but wherever we happen to be. Death isn't anything to be afraid of."

"I'm not scared to die at all. What scares me is livin' with, like... the loss," Sephiroth admitted. "I should have died a hundred times, but my body just won't. At this point I think the only thing that could kill me is if I lost you. I don't think my heart could take it. Thinkin' about possibilities like that is drivin' me crazy."

"Seph..." Cloud breathed, touched so deeply that he could hardly stay in his own skin. He was beyond flattered, nearly to the point of humiliation that Sephiroth would say such a thing. He scratched his eyebrows and pondered what to possibly say to a man who loved him so much. "... There's only one solution to this problem."

Sephiroth eyebrows lifted a little, "What?"

"I'll make sure you die first."

"... You're a dick."

Cloud giggled, "What do you think I keep you around for? If shit hits the fan, you're my meat shield!"

"Alright. Cut me open and sleep inside me if you need to."

"Ew!"

"Then eat me."

"No!" Cloud bellowed. "You're all muscle; it'd be like chewing on rope! I'd need a ton of ketchup!"

Sephiroth didn't know why, but he was now completely at ease. He wanted a little more pity, though. "I'm already on my way to the grave, listen to this shit... I worked out too hard this mornin', and I actually hurt myself."

"What?" Cloud cried. "How?"

"I pulled a muscle in my right shoulder. So I went to the lab and they fixed it, but it's still sore. I got grounded in my office for the next couple days. I was supposed to do a trainin' exercise tonight and it was gonna be really fun, but I had to miss it."

"What was the training?" Cloud inquired.

"Shovin' Junior SOLDIERs out of a chopper without a parachute for the first time," Sephiroth muttered. "It's my favorite thing."

"Maybe that's why you're in such a weird, gwouchy mood?" Cloud asked in the stickiest, sweetest baby talk he dared.

"... Maybe I'm gettin' old..." Sephiroth whined back, and in his low vocal register it sounded more like a creaking door in a horror movie.

"No you're not!"

"Baby, I'm fallin' apart. My whole fuckin' body hurts. And I was lookin' forward to Friday with you... 'cause I need a backrub."

"Aww sweetheart!" Cloud cooed before covering the phone in noisy kisses. "I'll give you one tomorrow, I promise! I'll give you a hundred kisses! I'll count them all out to make sure I don't miss one! And they'll get you through the weekend until I can see you again."

Sephiroth found himself taking complete comfort in being treated like an infant. "I'll find somethin' to do at HQ this weekend. Probably just train, maybe get roped into a mission."

"Take a fucking day off, Seph."

"What am I supposed to do all alone?"

"Order a pizza, look at naked pictures of me and touch yourself."

"Okay," Sephiroth thought aloud, finding that option to be quite appealing.

"I promise Seph, I'm missing our quality time for a good reason. You're gonna be so proud of me when you see how much I'm improving. I can't wait to show you someday!"

"Someday?"

"Well, it's not like I can really show you now... you can wipe the floor with me. But maybe someday when I'm a SOLDIER we can train together. You could teach me how to fight like you do. I would love that."

"I want you to be better than me," Sephiroth said, and almost regretted voicing that wish aloud.

Cloud took it as the joke that it wasn't. "Oh yeah right! That'll never happen!"

"That should be your goal, though."

"Let me work on getting up to your level. I can work on kicking your ass afterwards."

Sephiroth found himself smiling at that. "... Let me train you."

"No way! You told me on the very first day that you would not be helping me like that."

"Things are different now. I want to."

"I can't concentrate when I try to do anything physical with you, it turns me on too much."

"We'll fuck beforehand so you can concentrate. Plus sword combat is way different than hand-to-hand," Sephiroth pointed out. "Maybe I can show you somethin' tomorrow night after work if you're up for it? And if you like how I teach, we'll make it a thing."

"Do you have any spare swords at your place?"

"Who do you think you're talkin' to?"

Cloud, obsessed with the idea of holding a sword and swinging it at things, instantly agreed. "Okay!"

They talked for a few more minutes before Cloud left Sephiroth to head to the gym with his friends before dinner. Once again, Sephiroth opened his laptop to find his inbox full of emails from personnel.

He stared at the screen for a moment, and felt the same dread creep back up on him. Cloud was fine, nothing was going to happen to him at school. Genesis and Angeal were both in the building, Zack had gone drinking with Kunsel, and Vincent was probably somewhere being sneaky and creepy and was never in danger by default.

Everyone he cared about was okay.

So why the negative vibe? What good was intuition when it wasn't specific?

Sephiroth sat there, running fingers over his hair and playing with the ends. Eventually he got up, and despite an order from the labs to remain at his office and rest his shoulder, he went to the training floor to find someone's ass to kick.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Zack rarely got calls from mysterious people that weren't on his contact list. Intrigued, he answered with a very deep, grown up, "Yes?"

"Hey."

And the grown up act was immediately dropped, "Hey Seph, what's up?"

"Nothin'," He lied.

"Where are you calling from? Your voice sounds weird, like you're in a tube of helium or something."

Sephiroth was currently hiding in an officer's private quarters at the Northern Crater barracks and inhabiting the body of a child. He was working hard to not have a full blown panic attack.

He'd managed to sneak into the base rather easily, but was spotted by three more guards and two construction workers... and they had to be disposed of. The body count up to six, and Sephiroth was getting more terrified by the moment.

He didn't wanna have to kill anyone else. In an effort to get some information without seeming suspicious, he decided to call the dumbest person he knew : Zack Fair.

Sephiroth did his best to put a little more rumble into his voice, "Don't blame me, this connection sucks. I'm on a landline."

"Why?"

"Who cares? Listen, are you busy?"

Far from it. Zack was lying in a church pew while Aerith tended to her garden. It was his job to keep her company while remaining completely silent; his presence was required but verbal communication was undesirable.

It was incredibly boring, but not so much that he wanted to get roped into going back to work. When Sephiroth asked if he was busy or not, the result was usually dangerous and tiring, so Zack lied. "Not really, I'm at the bar with Kunsel. Ya know, getting really drunk. Way too drunk to do any kind of work..."

"I just need to talk to you," Sephiroth said, and it came out sounding childish and vulnerable. Then he cleared his throat and added a deep, rumbling, "No homo."

"Of course, no homo," Zack agreed, but felt a little lost. Sephiroth wasn't the type of dude to just call him up to chit chat, unless it was work related. "... What's on your mind, boss?"

Sephiroth paused to think of a way to phrase this bizarre question, "... What's the very last thing we did together?"

"What do you mean?"

"What was the very last thing you and I did together?" Sephiroth repeated.

Zack winced, "Okay, look... the burritos weren't just for me, okay?"

"Eh?"

"I should have given you some. I wanted to give you some. But they were for... well... I have a confession to make."

"What the fuck are you talkin' about?"

"The burritos were for my son. He loves burritos."

So he'd woken up at the Northern Crater in a kid's body, but now it was clear to Sephiroth that he was in an Alfred Hitchcock alternate universe where Zack had reproduced. "You have a son?"

"Well, he's living inside Aerith at the moment."

Sephiroth closed his eyes in relief as realization swept over him. "So she kept the fuckin' baby afterall?"

Zack laughed briefly, "Yeah, it's a really long story."

"Wrap it up in six words or less."

"We're back together," Zack explained simply. "I didn't want to tell you on the phone, but - "

"Zack. I don't care if you and Aerith are together."

"You don't?"

"I knew you guys were probably gonna fix it, you always do. I honestly just don't give a fuck right now - "

"Great!" Zack let out a whoosh of relief, clapping his chest. "So I'm a father-to-be! And she really digs burritos right now - "

"Why do you keep mentioning burritos?"

Zack heaved a sigh, "You wouldn't fucking let it go! You were acting like I was killing you. I mean, you should be happy enough that I went out to bring you dinner anyways you're so ungrat- "

"When was this?" Sephiroth interrupted.

"Uh. Tonight."

"We were together tonight?"

"No shit."

"How many hours ago?"

"What are you talking about?"

Getting information from Zack was frustrating enough, but Sephiroth wasn't in the mood to fuck around. He switched from leading questions to full on interrogation mode, "What time did you come into work this morning?"

"Dude, you saw me come in."

"What time?"

"... Is Lazard suspicious about my time card?"

"What time, Zack?"

"Five this morning."

"Bullshit!"

"Ten," Zack admitted.

"What time did we leave HQ?"

"You said it was alright if I left at four, as long as I brought you some tacos. Do you need me to come back to finish something? Just tell me, I can't take this pressure."

"What time did I leave HQ?" Sephiroth clarified.

"Aren't you still there?" Zack wondered.

Sephiroth pursed his lips as his understanding began to slowly lead him to a very uncomfortable reality. "... Yeah, I'm still here. I'm just uh... can I talk to Kunsel?"

"No, I'm at the church with Aerith. Did you know that pregnant chicks can't hold in farts? Aerith has pretty rancid gas because of those burritos!" Zack cried, and in the background a female voice shouted in the distance.

"I'm so sorry that I chose to call you," Sephiroth grumbled, touching his forehead where a headache continued to give a dull pound every few seconds. It led his small, thin fingers to a short hairline, where they played restlessly in the trimmed silver hairs.

"So you really are okay about me and Aer getting back together?"

"I never said I was okay with shit," Sephiroth muttered. "I just said that I don't give a shit."

"What about me being a daddy? You're gonna be a godfather! You'll be just like Al Pacino!"

"No."

"It'd mean a lot to me, though! I have to pick a godfather and I need someone reliable. And you never know, you might have a gay adoption baby someday. And I'll be proud to be your kid's godfather!"

"I'm not adoptin' a fuckin' baby. And even if I did, I wouldn't want my hypothetical adopted baby goin' to live with you, your cunt girlfriend, and your bastard child. My baby sounds like it had a hard enough life as it is."

"Who else can I trust?"

"Ask Angeal."

"Someone who won't just use the baby as a pussy magnet," Zack amended. "That's the only reason he takes his dogs to the park! To pick up single moms! Isn't that gross?"

"Pick a lesbian, then..." Sephiroth said, still running his hand over the short hairs on the back of his head.

"I guess Ronny would make a decent godfather," Zack laughed. "So did this conversation clear anything up for you, Lazard? I know you're listening. You can dock my pay if you want, I came in at ten and I'm not ashamed of it, I'm a father-to-be and I have shit to take care of - "

"Lazard's not listenin', Zack."

"Whatever. I'm gonna let you go because Aerith wants me to sit in silence and pay attention to her exclusively. But just not say anything while I do it."

"Sit and be pretty, Zack. It's what you do best."

"You called me pretty, but forgot to 'no homo'!" Zack cried.

"I don't want to 'no homo' anymore. You're pretty, I can say that."

"Alright," Zack conceded. "You're pretty, too. You have great bone structure."

"Thanks..." Sephiroth slumped down and rested his forehead on his hand. "I'll see you later."

"Something wrong?"

"I'll see you later."

"Later boss," Zack replied cheerfully, and hung up.

Sephiroth replaced the old fashioned landline phone on the receiver, and was once again by himself in the cheerfully furnished officer's room. He hadn't realized he was smiling until it faded from his features. Zack could always be counted on for that, if not for gaining much useful information.

But at least Sephiroth now knew a few important facts. He'd lost a significant amount of time, and nobody knew he was gone yet.

Perhaps the next call he should make should be to the medical labs...

When Sephiroth was a child, they'd done things to him that no human being should have ever had to endure. He'd withstood pain so terrible he wished for death before he even knew what life really was. He'd been humiliated, used, and only shown just enough warmth from Vincent to retain any sort of sanity. But Vincent and everyone else involved in Sephiroth's upbringing knew that he was livestock bred in captivity.

Sephiroth couldn't go through that again. Not knowing what he knew about friendship, normal life, and the wonderful ability that adults have to eat whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.

Besides... who wouldn't want to start over as a kid, knowing everything they'd known as an adult?

Sephiroth entertained a daydream of roaming far away. He could drain enough from his bank account to survive until he was old enough to get a job as a mercenary... he could be a badass teenage assassin and take out all the bigwigs at Shin-Ra. Or maybe just be a normal jack-off working in a store, or a waiter in a restaurant, or a fisherman on one of those huge barges in the giant rubber pants.

He could do anything he wanted to.

He'd just lay low off the grid somewhere quiet, earning an honest living and shooting the shit with civilians. He'd dye his hair, and live the normal life he'd always secretly fantasized about; a quaint little house done in a warm color palette, a few dogs, and probably even some wind chimes. He could have the house the Golden Girls lived in.

General Sephiroth would simply go missing and eventually be presumed dead, thus giving an appropriately mysterious ending to the strange legend of his life.

It'd never work, of course. They would find him.

And he couldn't imagine a future that didn't have Cloud in it. Could he really just disappear forever to forge some new identity, and leave Cloud out of the equation?

What would break Cloud's heart more though? If the love of his life suddenly vanished, or if he showed up as a fucking little kid? There was absolutely nothing that could be done to remedy the sickness of their relationship with a body like this. Cloud would not want him anymore, and frankly he wouldn't want to put Cloud in the position of having to look past the obvious perversion of seeing a child in a romantic light. God forbid a sexual one.

Sephiroth estimated his body to be about six years old. Cloud would have to wait nearly a decade before his lover would be half the man he used to be.

Their love story was over.

Sephiroth's throat made a broken little sound. He closed his eyes tight, hoping in a childish way that this was all some really stupid dream. He'd wake up with a breath of relief and laugh, roll out of bed and go call Cloud and tell him about it...

It was with that futile wish that Sephiroth knew a greater loss than he'd ever known in his entire life.

That thought felt like poison in his mind, and Sephiroth mentally snapped that line of thinking shut. It was still there though, like a muffled voice from the trunk of a car. It couldn't be kept quiet for long.

Cloud wouldn't love him anymore.

This truth continued to grow in mental volume and repeat itself into a blaring mantra. It sounded through his mind like the trumpet of an angel of death, awful and final and inarguably true.

Sephiroth suffered a very physical wound, like his heart was slowly caving in on itself and grinding to an agonizing halt, then combusting into a bouquet of knives and carving him open from the inside. He hugged the bed's new, starchy blanket in an effort to keep the contents of his chest from spilling across the mattress.

Sephiroth couldn't breathe. He was going to die.

But his chest wasn't actually gaping open to let his insides out. The only thing that actually escaped Sephiroth's body were tears, and they burned his eyes as they poured out onto the pillow. The childish sound that accompanied them only fueled more furious sobbing.

Sephiroth had never cried like that in his life, and he couldn't stop until he was too exhausted to continue.

Once he'd caught his breath, Sephiroth lifted his hand to wipe some of the wetness off of his cheek. These hands were bound in brand new baby skin. No sores, no calluses, no rough, raw blisters. Even the crisscross shaped imprints from gripping Masamune's handle had been smoothed out.

Some philosophers say that bodies are temporary vehicles for the human soul, and that the most permanent part of a man's being was intangible. Just the same, beings are obsessed with the appearance of their vehicle, and certainly would be able to tell the difference in the smallest details of their body compared to another person's body.

Sephiroth knew for a fact that this was not his body mutated back into a child-like form. This was a new body entirely. He'd been reborn.

But why? Had he died? Had he been resurrected? Had he gone through time?

"I need a bath," He announced to the room.

He was not going to think about anything for at least twenty minutes. He was going to chill the fuck out.

Sephiroth flipped on the bathroom light, and groaned at what he saw in the mirror before turning it back off. After a moment, the light was on again and he was staring at himself.

He stood on the toilet so he could get a better look.

He looked closely at his face, his eyes, his teeth, and his tongue. It all looked the same as it was when he was a little kid. He teeth were too big for his face, and he tested them out and found several wiggly ones. The ordeal of gaining his adult teeth would be suffered again, and he moaned a little with dread.

Sephiroth searched for the zipper to his tiny, stupid little leather battle suit. Seriously, who the fuck made these things in kid sizes? Once he located the zipper and pulled, the garment vanished into a plume of thick black smog, leaving him nude.

... Highly unusual. But not the weirdest thing to happen to him that day.

Sephiroth groaned at the mirror again upon the sudden nudity of his tiny little pathetic body. He was built strong, so killing the low level guards had been no big deal, but god forbid he get into any actual danger.

He rubbed a hand over his narrow ribcage, seeing no tattoo there. That had been an enormous deal to him, because he'd never done anything truly spontaneous or rebellious in his entire life. He had to admit that a tiny part of the reason he'd done it was because he knew Cloud would find it sexy, but the greater reason was to claim his body for himself. And since he'd gotten the tattoo, he'd not heard a word from Jenova.

But now it was gone, and this new body was defenseless. Sephiroth traced the Jenovian phrase where it used to be with his fingertip, and realized it was probably a futile wish. His body never belonged to him.

Sephiroth sadly perched on the edge of the tub and turned the dials to scalding hot, and waited for it to fill. He couldn't help but look down at his long, skinny legs that were capped off by huge feet. He stretched them out, shaking his head at the pain of puberty, and the uncontrollable growth spurts he'd suffered. There would be pain, hunger, moodiness, pimples, spontaneous erections... but eventually his big hands and long feet and shark teeth would match the rest of him. Now it was just gawky, clumsy, and awkward.

He eventually mustered up the nerve to check himself out below the waist. He didn't quite remember what his childhood junk looked like, but there it was. His dick kind of looked like Cloud's after he shaved his pubes off.

"Chill," Sephiroth reminded himself. The water was ready, and he dropped down into it.

He wasn't searching for an upside to this situation, but he found one in the bathtub. He was able to stretch out in ways he'd forgotten in a grown man's body. With arms and legs both completely outstretched, he floated in the hot water and totally relaxed.

It was kind of nice.

He found a small bar of complimentary soap waiting on the shower ledge, and used it to wash up. As he was using it, he thought for a moment that it kind of looked like a barge in this large, hot ocean of water.

"Brrshhh," Sephiroth rumbled, sailing the soap ship across the water's surface. With his other hand, he splashed a little and created a whirlpool. The ship fought hard against the raging sea, and eventually a pinpoint of sunlight shone through the clouds, illuminating the sparkling ocean and the survivors of the storm.

Before they could get too comfortable with their victory over nature, a large, white creature poked it's snout up from the water's surface. The captain removed his eye patch slowly, "... Oh no. Ah, fucking Christ Almighty! Oh sweet fucking Jesus! It's a... sea monster!"

"We're goners!" The second mate cried. "Tell my boyfriend I love him!"

"Your next boyfriend is gonna be Davy Jones! You fagggooooot!" The captain bellowed, and the ship was engulfed by the terrifying white creature.

Sephiroth sat there, holding the bar of soap in a washcloth and feeling like he'd just come out of a dream. A fierce smile slowly faded from his face as he realized just what the fuck he'd been doing.

He was playing.

With a shudder, he abruptly stood up to drain the tub of water. He wrapped himself up to his armpits in a towel, and it dragged on the floor as he made his way back into the room, pacing in worry.

This was crazy. He had things to do, an army to lead, a boyfriend to take care of. He could not let this reality swallow him. His clothes had vanished... or something. So he had to steal a uniform from the base's uniform supply warehouse. He had to figure out what to do, perhaps there was a way to expedite the process of growing up with the lab's help. Surely they could give him some hormones or something. They could incubate him. Or something.

This was crazy, though. Sephiroth imagined that this must be the same brand of confusion a clone felt when coming into existence.

Sephiroth considered that option. He actually smirked about it for a moment, because it was ludicrous. But as unlikely as it was, the thought wiggled in his brain until he sat down on the bed, violently drying himself with the towel as he once again plucked the phone up from the cradle.

Sephiroth dialed his own private cell phone number.

Nobody would answer. It was abandoned in a pocket somewhere, in an empty pair of pants that Sephiroth was last wearing before he'd been reborn. After all, nobody even knew he was gone, yet.

What if someone answered, though? What if he himself answered?

Just as expected, it went to voicemail. Sephiroth heard his own voice ask for a brief message, and upon the tone, he emitted a noise that only occurred in the center of a death rattle, a mourning moan and helpless laughter.

After he hung up, he remained unsatisfied.

Getting his own voicemail was not enough. Sephiroth needed to know that he was gone out of that building, and that there wasn't some imposter running around and claiming his identity. He dialed his secretary Shelly, who answered with a friendly chirp, "General Sephiroth's office, how may I help you?"

"Is the General in?" Sephiroth asked, biting his fingertips as he listened for the answer.

"The General is not in his office at the moment, but is in the building if you need to speak with him urgently."

"Are you sure?" Sephiroth demanded.

Shelly seemed hesitant. "May I ask what this is in regards to?"

There was a shining beam of hope in Sephiroth's mind that perhaps Shelly didn't know he was gone yet, either. But he needed confirmation, he wanted her to say that he was gone.

So he thought for a moment, wondering what kind of call he would take no matter how busy he was. Even if he was balls deep inside of Cloud... what would the real and only Sephiroth stop everything to answer?

"... This is... Bruce Campbell's personal assistant. Mr. Campbell has gotten wind that the General is a fan, and is interested in negotiations about a private viewing of Bubba Ho -Tep."

"Oh yeah? Have the General's love letters finally paid off?"

That stung a little. "... May I speak with the General?"

"Hold please."

Time dragged on, and every agonizing minute was torture. But as fifteen minutes went by on hold, he began to feel quite good about it. They were having trouble finding him because he wasn't there.

Sephiroth was just about to hang up in victory when someone finally picked up the line.

It was a man with a deep, rumbling, jerky, Midgar-accented voice. It was out of breath and impatient, "General Sephiroth speakin', this better be good."

It was him.

Sephiroth was stunned, and his mouth hung wide open. He couldn't even compose a single word to respond with. He slowly replaced the phone back onto the receiver.

Then the crying came again, and Sephiroth simply let the tears fall. He really was a little kid, so he could indulge. Come to think of it, he would cry all fucking night long.

There was nobody to prove anything to. Nobody cared. He shouldn't even refer to himself as Sephiroth, anymore. He could disappear if he wanted to. Nobody would miss him. Nobody would know the difference.

Even as a clone, he still felt that he was better than the ones at the lab. Clones really were the lab's livestock, just underdeveloped copies of Sephiroth. He felt strong... he was intelligent, functional, and he felt like he had a good handle on Sephiroth's memories and life. He could recall everything, from childhood, to his professional life, to his love life.

The greatest difference between himself and any clone he'd ever encountered was that he was on the outside. But why?

Sephiroth gasped and clapped a hand over his mouth, ideas racing through his mind. What if there were other clones on the outside? What if he was dropped in the Crater while Hojo sat watching him from afar? Maybe this was like a boot camp for a new model SOLDIER, maybe he was supposed to take out the old Sephiroth to claim his place.

Or maybe it was something more organic. Maybe there was some mystical, otherworldly, Jenovian nonsense afoot? Maybe Jenova made him to execute the old Sephiroth, who was rebellious against her wishes? Not that he felt any inclinations towards obeying Jenova, but clearly there was only enough room in the world for one true son.

Sephiroth dried his tears with his towel, resigned with solemn determination. If Hojo was watching, he knew what the old bastard scientist wanted. And if Jenova did it, he knew what she wanted, too.

He also knew what he wanted. He wanted Masamune, his home, his job, his friends, and his precious boyfriend. To hell with how old he appeared to be! Cloud would wait for him. And the army would submit to him. And the lab absolutely would not reclaim him as their toy.

He didn't want to run away and be someone else. He wanted his life. But it was going to be even better this time, because he was not going to put up with an ounce of bullshit from the labs, from the President Shin-Ra, or even from Cloud.

First he had to kill Sephiroth.

He was sleepy though, so he'd need a nap first. And then he had to find some clothes that would fit him and sneak onto an airship to catch a ride home to Midgar. And he was really hungry, he'd definitely need to find some snacks for the ride. And maybe he could swipe someone's phone to play games on, it was almost ten fucking hours by airship after all.

But after all that, he would kill Sephiroth.

"Get obsessed about it," Sephiroth told himself. He turned off the light and curled up in a small ball under the covers.

He was asleep in moments. There were still no dreams.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

After a few hours at Dirty Rubbers, Cloud was dragging ass.

He'd managed to get cut that day in sword class, and had a big Batman band-aid on his cheek to prove it. That, compounded by the physical stress of the rest of the day had left him feeling especially tired.

So he chugged four energy drinks on the train ride downtown, and was left feeling violently awake and full of burps. When he'd arrived, Gus told him to wear whatever he wanted, so he decided to coordinate his Batman band-aid with a tiny pair of little kid-style Batman briefs. With a pair of yellow thigh highs and black Converse, he was feeling pretty damn sexy.

Then the night wore on, and the novelty of his outfit and the taurine of the energy drinks wore off. Cloud was kept too busy by customers to watch the door for Sephiroth, and eventually become so engrossed with work that he nearly forgot he was coming.

It was around ten o'clock when the store began to get a nightly rush of sexual business that Sephiroth finally arrived. He was pretty fucking delighted that Cloud didn't realize he was there - he was deep in conversation with two female customers about dildos. They were both blonde and dressed like private school girls, and upon closer inspection it was evident that that wasn't just a kinky costume. They were both younger than Cloud, and nervously considering what was going to be their first sexual purchase.

Cloud was selling them a very large dildo that came complete with remote control and disco lights. "This one's my favorite in the store, I totally want it for myself! It says on the box that when you shove it in your ass, you can see the flashing lights through your skin! I'm sure it works for your twat, too."

"Maybe something simpler? We've never really... done anything..." The taller girl was saying as she gently pulled on her ponytail.

"Why not?" Cloud asked incredulously. "How long have you two been dating?"

"Four months," She answered shyly.

Cloud's eyes widened, "And you haven't munched rug at all?"

They looked at each other nervously before muttering a, "No ..." and a, "... Not yet."

"Oh," Cloud blinked, feeling his face go red. "But surely you two have like, masturbated before?"

They both quickly shook their heads, and the smaller one added, "Do we even really need a dildo? I mean... we're lesbians. What do we need it for?"

"Because penetration is what nature intended!" Cloud cried, lost on the irony that he was currently holding a plastic phallus with a built in disco ball. "And it vibrates! Chicks dig that in their quadrants."

"What's a quadrant?" The little one laughed.

"A division of the abdominal cavity," Cloud answered confidently.

"I totally get that you're gay, but have you ever seen a naked girl?" The taller one accused.

"Well, not up close..." Cloud admitted.

"But you've gone to school, right?"

"Be sensitive," The shorter one whispered to her companion. "Maybe they don't teach health class in Bone City."

"I'm not from Bone City! I'm from Nibelheim, and yes they do teach health there! I passed the vagina diagram test!" Cloud declared indignantly before adding, "... I mean, I got a 'D' but I did technically pass."

The girls had a good laugh at Cloud's expense, and Sephiroth covered his mouth to stifle a rude chuckle.

Cloud was quite done teaching sexual education, "Just stick the dildo up your twat. Maybe even your ass. Life's short."

The petite girl continued to giggle, "I would never do that!"

"You should at least try it out! Would you like to put some tester batteries in and see for yourself what it does?"

"Do you mind?"

"Not at all. Putting batteries into stuff is something that I actually know how to do..." Cloud trailed off as he realized that his boyfriend was leaning on the counter and had witnessed that entire conversation.

He was a strikingly handsome vision, like a tall, hunky, pale James Dean from outer space. Sephiroth was incognito that evening underneath his cadet cap and behind thick glasses, and wearing a black bomber jacket, a plain white v-neck and his leather uniform pants.

Cloud felt instantly flustered. He had no problem talking to an underage lesbian couple about girl sex, but for some reason it was humiliating under Sephiroth's cool, green stare. Instead of giving him a greeting, Sephiroth pushed off of the counter and made himself busy studying a rack of shirts nearby.

Cloud hid behind the counter and tried to keep the embarrassed smile off of his face as he located the correct battery size. He inserted them into the vibrator and used the remote to show the girls the lowest setting, and the colored strobe hypnotized all three of them.

"Oh, that's nice," The taller girl commented, taking it out of Cloud's hand with fascination. Never masturbated before? Yeah right.

"Hold on," Cloud said to her, and pushed the controls, making the thing nearly rumble right out of her grip. The lights went insane, and the whole thing looked and sounded like a Skrillex concert.

"Wow!" The girls cried.

"See? You don't even have to put it in your snatch to enjoy it, but I know I would!" Cloud smiled, unable to stop his eyes from flicking in Sephiroth's direction. The General was trying his best to look indifferent while turning the rack of sunglasses.

The girls were way too busy to notice Cloud's attention periodically diverting to Sephiroth, and after a little teeter tottering over the expensive cost, they finally decided to split the difference with their allowance and buy it. Cloud cheerfully completed the transaction, and wished them luck as they left hand in hand.

Although there were still people shopping in the store, Cloud bolted towards Sephiroth once the girls were gone. He wrapped both arms tight beneath his jacket to pull him into a hug. "Hi! Mmm, you're warm!"

"You're naked," Sephiroth greeted, feeling a chill on the surface of Cloud's bare skin and wrapping the ends of his open jacket around him.

Cloud went up on his toes, tilting his head to steal a kiss beneath the rim of his hat. It was hot and quick, and left them smiling at each other up close. "Do you feel better today?"

The mental worry of yesterday was non-existent with Cloud pulled up tight against him. Sephiroth said nothing, but began obnoxiously pushing kisses across Cloud's face. His lips became gentle when they reached the band-aid on his cheek, and then became noisy and sloppy again once they'd crossed that border and traveled onto his ear.

"Security!" Cloud laughed, but couldn't resist turning his head to catch Sephiroth's mouth again. The tone of the kiss he stole was unexpected; despite the rough handling, Sephiroth's lips were sweet and needy. Cloud felt himself relax right into it, and he was transported to a place where anything outside of Sephiroth's mouth was too unimportant to consider.

Cloud breathed against Sephiroth's face, their tongues leisurely slipping against one another. Sephiroth actually sighed, a silent affair that only Cloud would notice due to the tiny, warm puff of air against his cheek.

Sephiroth pulled back. "You're givin' me wood. Which means you already have wood. We gotta stop."

"Definitely," Cloud gave a silly laugh, groaning a bit as he hid against Sephiroth. "Have you been eating Red Vines?"

"Yep," Sephiroth smiled, remaining close to give Cloud a chance to rearrange the stiff contents of his underwear.

Once he was all tucked back, he nudged Sephiroth towards the counter, "There's a stool for you behind the register. Take off your jacket. Take of everything if you want..."

"Knock it off," Sephiroth growled as he shrugged out of his coat. He spotted Cloud's backpack and shoved it inside for the time being. While he settled onto his designated stool, he watched Cloud crouch down in front of the store's stereo to change the music.

In a departure from Social Distortion which had been roaring previously, Cloud put on the CD that Sephiroth had made for their first anniversary.

Sephiroth tried to put thought into the CD when he created it. It was really just a mix of his recent favorites that had any sort of romantic connotation, and consisted of slightly mopey electronic music. He'd very nearly thrown the thing into the garbage at the last minute; it was embarrassing and he didn't even think Cloud would like it all that much.

Little did he know Cloud would obsessively listen to every lyric and note and assign them all very specific meanings. To Cloud, it was the greatest and most profound love letter ever written. When he revealed that he'd sobbed like a baby the first time he'd listened to it, Sephiroth felt oddly proud of himself.

It didn't seem to be negatively affecting Cloud then however, and he draped himself around Sephiroth's shoulders from behind. After a brief embrace, both of his hands slipped up the back of Sephiroth's shirt, and his thumbs began to rub firm, soothing circles into his shoulder blades. Cloud seemed to sense exactly where it was sore, and exactly how to touch.

Sephiroth's eyes closed and his chin dropped to his collar bone. He was putty in Cloud's hands, but it only lasted a moment before Cloud kissed the side of his face and was gone.

"Where you goin'?" Sephiroth asked, disappointment clear in his voice as he lifted his head and opened his eyes.

"To get some new stock from the storage room. I get to redress the mannequins in new outfits that just arrived for winter! And some pants came in with these rips right below the ass, and I want you to try them on. They're so cute!"

"I have too many p - "

"Try them on, anyways!"

"Okay," Sephiroth folded his arms on the counter. The moment Cloud was gone, he was approached by a hefty man with a face full of angry acne, who dropped a heavy metal t-shirt and a big tit porno magazine for purchase. "... Cloud, you got a customer."

"They're called dirtbags!" Cloud shouted from the back.

"There's a dirtbag, Cloud," Sephiroth called back dryly, crossing his arms.

Over the sound of shifting boxes, Cloud's voice came straining. "I'll be there in a minute!"

Sephiroth was forced to share an awkward silence with the metal head. Sephiroth had experienced many staring contests in his lifetime, but none quite as ripe with tension as this. The guy even had a twenty gil bill extended in his fist, and it hung in the air like a heavy testicle repeatedly hitting his forehead.

"... He said he'll be here in a minute," Sephiroth eventually said.

The fat dude didn't move a centimeter. "Why can't you ring me up?"

"Because I don't work here."

"Then why are you behind the counter?"

Sephiroth couldn't bear another moment of intimacy with this civilian idiot, so he uncrossed his arms and stood up from his stool. "How much is this stuff supposed to be?"

The dude shrugged, "I think the magazine's supposed to be five. The shirt is like seven, or somethin'."

"So I'll take twelve and give you back eight. Easy..." Sephiroth pushed up his glasses and squinted at the cash register, then experimentally pressed a few buttons that he thought might open it. A slip of paper came printing out that read nonsense, and Sephiroth threw it in the garbage and tried again. This time, a slip of paper came sliding out and didn't stop, eventually curling in a pile onto the floor.

"I have a better idea," Sephiroth pulled his wallet out to see what cash he had on him. "How about the shirt and the magazine for ten gil, and I'll give you ten back?"

"Sounds good to me!" The man agreed enthusiastically.

"Cool," Sephiroth nodded and they exchanged the money.

"Oy!" Cloud cried, dropping a large box of unopened merchandise near the counter and swooping in to rescue the sale. "Sorry sir, he doesn't work here. I'll ring you up properly."

"No way, I like his system better," The metal dude flashed a rock n' roll sign with his pinkie and forefinger before slipping out the door with his purchases.

"What an asshole..." Cloud fumed as he rang up the purchase properly for the store's inventory. He then whirled around to shove money at Sephiroth, "Here's your change! You're paying the difference! And you're buying me an energy drink!"

"I feel unappreciated," Sephiroth complained as he took his money.

"Thanks for trying to help," Cloud gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before going to the store's drink cooler and helping himself to a beverage. He took a few gulps as he made his way to the abandoned boxes. "I've been trying to get this stuff from the back all night, but people keep stopping me."

"Kinda tough bein' the only one here?" Sephiroth assumed.

"I dunno," Cloud sighed and began unpacking the boxes of new clothes to put out. "I'm calling my boss tomorrow and quitting."

Sephiroth watched curiously as Cloud began to undress a female mannequin. There was something erotic about the way Cloud's long fingers worked buttons and zippers, even if it was on a dummy. "... Why do you wanna quit? You get to talk about sex and play with clothes and have people drool all over you. This little gig seems perfect for you."

"I'm tired," Cloud responded humorlessly.

"... You're gonna die tired," Sephiroth reminded him, fascinated by the way Cloud's hands clinically spread across the surface of the mannequin's skin. "You may as well do somethin' you enjoy in the meantime. Once you're officially drafted, no more chances to do civilian work like this."

"Whatever," Cloud yawned, trying to twist apart the mannequin's legs, and was dismayed to find that they were attached to the body. He then began to wrestle to get the stiff, unworn leather lingerie off of her. "... Hey Seph, is it true that Turks stay awake for days at a time?"

"Everyone stays awake for days at a time."

"I quit the army, then..." Cloud sighed irritably, shoving the mannequin to the floor in an effort to find a better way to undress her. He ended up straddling her chest and taking on a very provocative position.

Sephiroth smiled as Cloud became more and more frustrated with his task. "You can't ever quit, you're too deep into it now."

"Yes I can! I wanna be your stay at home army wife!" Cloud declared, finally winning the battle and was rewarded with a naked plastic lady.

"I don't need a wife."

"Won't you marry me, Seph?" Cloud asked, feeling his heart skip a little at the realization that he was very literally proposing. His mouth was working on autopilot and he just... wasn't thinking. It slipped out!

... It slipped out while he was straddling a mannequin's hard plastic boobs, but Cloud held his breath while he waited for a response.

"No," was Sephiroth's answer.

Cloud almost reacted negatively, but the sparkle of humor in Sephiroth's eyes gave way to the fact that he did not consider this a serious question. And really, it wasn't.

However... if he'd said yes... there wasn't a single doubt in Cloud's mind that he'd grab Sephiroth's hand and leave this store to start planning their fucking wedding.

If Sephiroth had said yes... but he didn't.

"Well fine!" Cloud giggled and kept the conversation afloat with nervous babble. "But before you make a hasty decision, really consider it! I could blow you every morning before work and before bed every night. I'd keep your place clean, cook your dinner every single night... raise our children..."

"You can clean my place and blow me without bein' my wife."

"That's true, but... what about cooking? You like my cooking!" Cloud cried, yanking wool booty shorts on over the mannequin's leggings.

"It tastes good baby, and it's nice once in a while... but it's dumb to spend all day cookin' shit when you can order it."

"That's a horrible habit, though!" Cloud laughed. "You eat nothing but pizza, you're like a Ninja Turtle. You need me to be your wife, and I'll make real food for you and put love into it!"

"You're so stupid. It's just fuel to me and I'm hungry again in an hour."

Cloud let that go, and instead focused on another aspect of his marriage proposal : "What about raising our babies?"

"Don't go there."

"I've got news for you Seph, I want kids by the time I turn thirty."

"Is that a fact?"

"Two," Cloud told him. "A boy and a girl. I decided that for myself a long ass time ago... if we don't have any kids by then, I'm gonna adopt two of them on my thirtieth birthday."

Sephiroth found an endless supply of amusement in this strange logic, "If we don't already have kids? Meanin' you're prepared for the possibility of havin' a kid accidently? By havin' sex with me?"

"That's not what I meant! We might wind up with a kid some other way, ya know. You don't need to fuck girls to have kids."

Sephiroth removed his glasses, a pained expression on his face as he stared at his lover. "... I know you got a 'D' on the vagina diagram test, but you do know where babies come from, right?"

"Shut up!" Cloud screamed. "Rhonda and Julie had two babies!"

"Oh please," Sephiroth drawled.

"The clock's going to start ticking one day, so you'd better get used to the idea! Two kids when I'm thirty! Two kids when you're thirty-six! We're gonna be DILFs!"

"It's a good thing neither of us will live to be that old," Sephiroth muttered bitterly, and immediately regretted it. He saw the words physically harm Cloud as he said them, and wished he had a way to reel them back in, or turn back time just a few seconds to think before he spoke.

Cloud stared at him with wide eyes for a moment, unable to reply. There was a customer at the counter, and more followed. Cloud became busy with them, and even when they were gone, task after task presented itself and kept Cloud occupied.

Their mutual uneasiness had to hang in the air until there was an opportunity to talk.

Sephiroth waited impatiently for another small rush of customers to be served, and in the tiny window of privacy, he caught the back of Cloud's underwear and physically dragged him into an embrace. "Hey."

"Hm?" Cloud asked with a yawn, the weariness of work setting in.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" Cloud asked, his blue eyes dim as he blinked the yawn away.

"Ya know."

"Whatever, I get it. You're having a quarter life crisis or something," Cloud smiled a little at that. "... But do you have to be so mean?"

Sephiroth gave a series of kisses to Cloud's forehead and nose, "Sorry."

"Do you think it's stupid that I want a family someday?" Cloud appeared unsure as his eyes averted to the side. "I just always saw myself as being an awesome dad someday, and like taking care of someone. It is lame, isn't it? "

Sephiroth considered that for a moment, "... Do your kids have to be human?"

"Huh?"

"Let's get a puppy when you move in."

Cloud was suddenly wide awake, "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I work too much to take care of one by myself. But between the two of us, maybe it won't be so bad, ya know?"

"We'll be great daddies!" Cloud agreed, joyously throwing his arms around Sephiroth and smothering him in an eager hug. He had twelve whole years to nag him into changing his mind about a baby, so instead Cloud focused on a more immediate addition to their family. "What kind of puppy do you want?"

"I don't care what it looks like as long as it's big."

"Why does it have to be a big dog?" Cloud inquired.

"They're more fun. I want somethin' I can take to the park and run with, or take to the beach and actually play with. Tiny dogs don't do shit. And what if I roll over onto it when I'm sleepin' and kill it?"

"You want a dog in the bed?"

"The floors get too cold at night. I guess it'd go on the couch if not the bed with us."

"It belongs outside at night!" Cloud laughed, completely ignorant about how to treat a dog in a big city like Midgar. In Nibelheim, domesticated animals became the entire neighborhood's pet, and were left outside at night to protect gardens from rabbits. It never occurred to Cloud to have it in bed with him. "You're planning to spoil our dog!"

"No way," Sephiroth argued with a grin. "I already have one spoiled bitch to deal with."

Cloud smothered Sephiroth in a biting kiss. He nibbled on Sephiroth's lips with his teeth, and snipped hard enough to draw a soft noise from the man. After the point had been made, Cloud pulled back with a thoughtful expression. "... I'm very surprised you want a dog. I was sure I had you pegged as a cat man."

"Why?"

"Those sexy kitty cat eyes of yours," Cloud told him, sticking his tongue out just enough to lick the red mark he'd left on Sephiroth's lower lip.

"Um..." An older woman interjected from the other side of the counter. "I have birds."

After Cloud tallied her purchases, there was work to be done. There were four more mannequins, and they were all systematically redressed in stylish winter clothes, and corresponding merchandise arranged next to them on racks and tables. Cloud then got rid of the boxes and swept the floor, all while helping people fetch sizes and give them advice on what to try on next.

That night Sephiroth was made keenly aware of the fact that he had a great fucking catch in Cloud Strife. Not only did he look like a little porn star in his snug little undies, but Cloud also had an enormous heart, which was something that Sephiroth knew he took for granted. It was hard to always be aware of how much he loved Cloud, but for some reason, watching him work in the store that night made him ill. Lovesickness was a real phenomenon, and Sephiroth felt it all over.

He mentally separated himself from his own life, and considered Cloud from an outside perspective. He supposed that if he were a customer, just walking around downtown and poking into this shop out of curiosity, he'd have fallen to pieces at the sight of Cloud in his snug little undies and matching band aid.

He was falling to pieces, anyway. But Sephiroth remained cool and impartial on his stool, just smiling a little whenever Cloud's eyes met his.

Once midnight hit, the final customers were ushered out and Cloud finally locked the door and closed the gates behind the windows. He shut off the main lights and came around the counter to turn the music down a bit as he performed his final duties.

"We can go in a minute. This won't take me long," he said, running his fingertips over Sephiroth's forearm as he passed by.

Sephiroth felt a chill to the bone at that fleeting touch. He remained seated on the stool, but scooted up close behind Cloud. He rested his chin on Cloud's shoulder and watched as he began to count out neat little piles of money on the counter.

After a few moments, Sephiroth spoke softly, "Hi."

"Shh, I'm thinking."

"'Kay," Sephiroth whispered. Although he remained quiet, his hands refused to be ignored and slipped down Cloud's smooth arms, squeezing a little to appreciate a noticeable change in girth. Sephiroth let his fingers dip into the ridges of muscle, then brush around the front to his narrow, but strong chest. He felt the two tiny, peachy points of his nipples against his palms, and brushed his fingertips over them. When there was no response, he pinched.

Cloud arched a little, but continued to silently count.

Sephiroth leaned back a bit and let his fingers trace back around Cloud's shoulder blades to follow the deep, long line carved into the center of his slender back. Coupled with the dimples of his tail bone, it all pointed like an arrow to his round little ass.

Sephiroth liked the way Cloud looked from behind. He ran his fingers over every ridge of bone and indent of muscle, and finally wiggled them into the elastic waistband of Cloud's undies. He pulled, only to let them snap back sharply.

"That does it!" Cloud cried out, grabbing both of his hands and pressing them flat against the countertop. "I'm gluing your hands right here. Don't move them until I say so!"

Sephiroth snickered and rested his cheek on Cloud's shoulder again, looking over at him patiently while breathing in the soft, masculine scent of his hair and skin. The magic glue technique eventually failed, and Sephiroth's hands slowly migrated off the counter and to Cloud's hips. He let his palms coast down the outside of Cloud's thighs, looking for hair but not feeling any. He knew it was there though, but it was only the softest of downy peachfuzz.

Sephiroth felt up Cloud's firm stomach, where there was a trail of blunt, wiry hair leading to the front of his briefs. Cloud had made the mistake of shaving it all off, but in response it was growing back in hard and dark, and Sephiroth fucking loved it.

After one more pass back down Cloud's thighs, his fingers hit the slightly scratchy material of his black stockings. They were cheap nylon things, but Cloud's long, tan legs made them look so fucking good. Sephiroth clawed at them with his short, bitten fingernails like a happy cat, liking the static noise it made.

Cloud bent over to write, completely indifferent to all of this. Sephiroth stopped scratching, and instead dug his fingers into the tight nylon and began to slowly inch them down.

Cloud brought his thighs together tight, preventing them from being pushed down any further. The action pushed his ass up beautifully, and it was only centimeters away from the front of Sephiroth's pants. He could feel Cloud's body heat from the tiny distance, and it made his cock jump against the snug leather.

He plucked at the back of Cloud's underwear and slowly pulled up on the black elastic band. A wedgie crawled up into Cloud's ass until his creamy, smooth cheeks popped out of the bottom of the tiny briefs.

Cloud squeaked, "Do you mind?"

"Christ, you're so hot when you're doin' stuff."

"Let me finish!" Cloud begged, his voice trembling.

"Does your boss come back at night?" Sephiroth asked, unable to resist sinking his teeth into the back of Cloud's shoulder.

"Ow - Ah!" Cloud gave an elongated gasp and leaned back against Sephiroth. "... No, he doesn't come back... but let's wait 'til we get home!"

"I can't," Sephiroth rumbled, scooting that tiny bit closer on the stool to finally press his groin against Cloud's ass. Once that contact was made, his self control quickly unraveled. He kissed the side of Cloud's face as he pushed the underwear down off his hips.

"Oy! Hey now!" Cloud shrugged violently, shaking Sephiroth off of his shoulder before he pulled his underwear back up. "You won't let me fuck you at your job, so why would you wanna fuck me at mine? You aren't worried about cameras here?"

"You know there aren't any cameras here..." Sephiroth roped his arms around Cloud's waist and purred against his cheek. "... You got dressed for work thinkin' about gettin' fucked tonight."

"I'm supposed to dress like this!" Cloud said, doing his best to ignore the advances as he cleared off the counter. He squatted down to throw the cash into the store's safe, which put his head level to Sephiroth's groin. When he felt a bump against the back of his hair, he had to laugh. "Seriously?"

Sephiroth smiled down at him, "You love it."

Cloud stood up and turned around to face Sephiroth. A very long bulge was outlined beneath his undies, but he poked Sephiroth's chest with his finger sternly. "I have to keep my hands off of you when I'm at your job, so you have to keep your hands off of me when I'm - SEPHIROTH!"

Cloud's lower body was suddenly naked as Sephiroth peeled his underwear off and shoved them down his thighs. When they were to his knees, Cloud instinctively raised his foot to let Sephiroth push them over his shoes.

Cloud growled and hopped up onto the counter, losing all pretenses of pretending he didn't want this. Free from the confines of the Batman briefs, Cloud's cock was straining up almost to his belly button. Sephiroth stood up from the stool and took a place between his thighs, running his hands over the expanse of Cloud's legs as they wrapped around him and tugged him closer. He was tall and looming, and Cloud leaned back on his palms with his thighs spread wide, completely open for whatever Sephiroth wanted to do.

This was a high contrast to Cloud's previous attitude, and Sephiroth found himself nearly frantic to get his own clothes the fuck off. He pulled the cap off his head and tossed it, and Cloud reached up to help him yank his thin, white shirt over his head. His fingers then busied themselves pulling Sephiroth's hair tie out of the chaotic silver bun found underneath his hat.

"Just leave it," Sephiroth said, irritated at the pulling on his scalp and unable to move while Cloud was unraveling it.

"Sorry, almost - got it!" Cloud let out a little cry of victory as he finally freed his hair. It was slightly bent from being held back, but no less lovely as it slipped over Sephiroth's shoulders.

"Happy now?" He asked.

Cloud nodded up at him, twisting his fingers through it and pulling him down. Sephiroth leaned over him to press their bare chests together, and met Cloud's open mouth in a kiss. There was a deep blush on Cloud's face and chest, but it certainly didn't stem from embarrassment, but rather the rush of heat from Sephiroth's body. There was so much humidity between them that Cloud felt sweat spring up on his skin despite the early winter chill in the air.

"... I did think about you when I got changed for work... I wanted to look good for you," Cloud panted, looking up into his boyfriend's glowing feline eyes for approval as he quickly undid his belt and zipper. "Did you like it?"

"I couldn't look away..." Sephiroth began to pant slightly as Cloud eagerly pushed the leather pants down his hips, finding no underwear in the way. He dropped his cheek against Cloud's shoulder as warm hands wrapped around his cock, which had been aching since he'd first walked into the store. "Where can we do this? There a break room or somethin'?"

"No break room... and the storage room is dirty and full of bugs," Cloud told him, his chest rising and falling to catch a breath. "There's the dressing room, though."

"Good enough," He said, collecting Cloud and lifting him off of the counter.

"Sephiroth?" Cloud whispered urgently.

"Mm?"

"Did you tell Elena that you were picking me up tonight?"

"Huh?"

"I think she's here."

Sephiroth's head snapped up and he spotted her car idling by the curb in front of the store. "... Fuck. I forgot about her."

Cloud's limbs tightened around him. "Can she see us?"

"I dunno. Maybe. Probably."

Cloud went boneless and slid down out of Sephiroth's arms. He landed in a squatting position, snatched his backpack from the floor with his teeth and began to hastily crawl away.

Despite his intense sexual frustration, Sephiroth couldn't help but laugh at the picture Cloud made scurrying away with his backpack in his mouth. "Where ya goin'?"

"Mmph!" Cloud said around the strap of his bag, and vanished into the dark of the store.

"Don't get dressed!" Sephiroth begged, and then gave a long, miserable moan as he zipped his pants up and searched for his shirt. He yanked it back on inside out, and then pushed all of his hair over one shoulder to appear as tidy as possible.

He unlocked the door with an awkward smile, and waved at the sleek black vehicle parked in front of the store. "Yo!"

The dark tinted driver's window slid down and Elena's tiny face was not pleased, "What are you doing here?"

"I got him tonight! Didn't you get my text?"

"What text?"

Sephiroth sighed a little and approached, bending down to peer regrettably into the car. "The text telling you I came to get Cloud, and not to come...?"

"There was no text."

"Shit..." Sephiroth sighed, crossing his arms on her open window and staring up at her innocently. "My phone never works right down here; the service is so damn spotty. I'm pretty sure the metal in the plates scrambles up the signal - "

"The power produced by mako is not electromagnetic."

"...Oh yeah?"

"Therefore, metal cannot absorb mako waves," She said, narrowing her eyes at him. "... So do not give me that tired excuse about the plate screwing up cell phone service."

"Of course," Sephiroth nodded with raised eyebrows and wide eyes. "Then there must have been a solar flare and it fucked up the non-electromagnetic - "

"Don't you dare give me puppy eyes and lie to my face. You never sent a text, just admit it."

Sephiroth felt so justified in his lie that he wondered if perhaps he did send a text. His angelic expression dropped into a scowl, "Well maybe your phone is fucked up?"

"You are so inconsiderate!" Elena roared, startling the little Turk trainee in the seat beside her. "I drove forty-five minutes to pick up your boyfriend! And you couldn't have even texted me to tell me not to come?"

"I forgot," Sephiroth conceded. "Sue me."

"I hate you!"

"Don't be like that."

"I'm missing Real Housewives of Mideel!" Elena hissed. "You owe big time me for this!"

"I'll pay you anything if you let me off the hook and get the fuck out of here," Sephiroth leaned closer to add with a whisper, "You are seriously cock blockin' me right now."

"Fine, I'm leaving! But know this, General Sephiroth... You've made an enemy tonight! I'd be very careful if I was you!"

Sephiroth chuckled warmly at his shortest, smallest, and most serious friend. "What are you gonna do?"

"I could start by shooting you in the nuts."

Sephiroth continued to chuckle until Elena pulled out a Mini Uzi and smacked a magazine into the grip.

"Call you later," Sephiroth amicably yelled as he made long strides back to the door and quickly locked it. He then peeked out through the metal grating, fully anticipating bullets to rain against the door.

Instead Elena veered away from the curb, a rare laugh echoing off of the dark, empty streets as she rolled up her window. He let out a small breath of laughter, and felt somewhat guilty for wasting her time, but really couldn't claim to give a shit at that particular moment. He could smell Cloud, and the scent made him hungry.

He ripped his shirt back over his head as he made his way towards wherever Cloud had crawled off to hide. The store was dark and shadowy, illuminated only by the lights from the street. The mannequins added a touch of creepiness to the situation.

"Cloud," Sephiroth called.

"Is she gone?" Cloud's voice answered anxiously from the dressing room, and his smell involuntarily spiked hot. Nature intended for prey to be captured, and silent, secret clues made it impossible to hide from a predator.

Sephiroth entered the room and closed the door behind him. It was a pool of perfect darkness, and although he could guess where the light switch was, he let the dark remain. "C'mere."

Sephiroth could hear Cloud's breathing stop for a second, and then very quietly pick back up. There was a shift in the dark, and a slight creak of the floorboards that grew as Cloud crawled near.

Sephiroth unzipped his pants and began to push them down, before Cloud's hands bumped into his and took over the task. His cock was briefly teased with warm breath as Cloud quickly untied Sephiroth's combat boots and yanked them off his feet. The creaking of leather coupled with the sounds of material moving against skin created a short symphony in the otherwise still space, and once he was naked Cloud's mouth was everywhere.

Cloud's tongue slid down Sephiroth's lower stomach, dipping into his belly button and across the hard ridges of his hip bones. Cloud's soft hair brushed against his cock as he pressed wet kisses to his upper thighs, and there a silent giggle against his skin when Sephiroth buried a hand in his hair to urge him to the central goal.

Cloud shook the hand off his head, and deliberately stalled. Instead of opening his mouth, he brushed his nose against Sephiroth's pubic hair, and paused to breathe in the sweet, potent scent found there. He smiled against Sephiroth's groin when he recognized a certain cologne... meaning Sephiroth had to have sprayed it down his pants. Cloud took a moment to inhale appreciatively.

It fucking tickled, and Sephiroth arched a little against the wall in an effort not to slip away from the feeling of warm breath against his sensitive skin. Cloud smiled in satisfaction as he felt Sephiroth squirm, and rewarded him by giving the underside of his cock a firm lick. His hot tongue slid along the length, and down to his balls.

Sephiroth kept quiet, listening for the soft sighs and wet sounds Cloud created while he worked. One deep breath was the only warning Sephiroth got before his cock was down Cloud's throat. He pulled away, dragging his lips up to the head before pushing them back down again.

The sound and the sensation illustrated a beautiful picture in Sephiroth's mind, and he felt along the wall for the light switch, itching to see it happen. When he found it, he ran his fingers over the switch for a moment, waiting for the perfect moment. He felt Cloud's tongue move against him, heard another deep breath, and then he was swallowed down between soft lips.

When he felt his cock rub past the ridges on the roof of Cloud's mouth to the slick smoothness of his throat, Sephiroth turned the light on.

Cloud squinted and seemed annoyed to be caught in the act, but his mouth was far too full for him to complain verbally. He was paused, looking up with narrow eyes, until he adjusted to the light and the lack of privacy and got back to work.

There was definitely something freeing about sucking cock in the dark, or with his back to Sephiroth. Being watched was a little unnerving, but Cloud refused to let self consciousness hinder his performance. He'd been dying to get into Sephiroth's pants all night long, and if he wanted to watch him work it was slightly flattering.

When Cloud worked up the courage to glance up, and was surprised that Sephiroth wasn't even looking at him, but rather off to the side. Curiously, Cloud's eyes moved to see what was so interesting, when he realized the entire fucking wall next to them was one giant mirror.

He had never been remotely curious what he himself looked like while Sephiroth's cock was rammed down his throat, but he imagined it wasn't a very pretty picture. With a life-size display of the entire situation, he saw himself as a teary, snotty, red-faced, saliva-covered mess.

Cloud gagged and propelled backwards, spitting Sephiroth's cock out with an indignant cry. Before he could say anything, Sephiroth's hands were gripping his hair and silently urging him to continue.

His wet lips bumped against his abandoned cock, and Cloud gave a raspy squeak, "Turn the light off!"

"No."

"Please?"

"I wanna see."

Cloud's eyes couldn't help but dart over to the mirror. "... Lemme wipe off my - "

"No. Leave it..." Sephiroth cut him off, his thumb slipping between Cloud's teeth to gently pry his mouth open. "... Please?"

Cloud's tongue slid over Sephiroth's thumb, and he watched his lover's icy features darken. Sephiroth seemed to like things a little dirty, and Cloud often found himself embarrassed as a result. But now some wire in Cloud's brain was crossed, because he found himself sharply aroused by this humiliation, and by Sephiroth's desire to experience more of it.

There was spit and tears all over his reddened face, but he left it there as he opened his mouth wide to pull Sephiroth's cock back down his throat. Sephiroth's eyes averted to the side, and he appeared consumed with whatever was happening in the mirror. Cloud closed his eyes and worked, placing his hands on the back of Sephiroth's thighs for balance as he sucked deep, every so often pulling back to get some air and work the head with his lips and tongue.

Sephiroth let him continue for several minutes, and Cloud eventually tasted heavy salt leaking from the slit. Sephiroth's cock was straining and thick inside his mouth, and he felt it twitch and leak against his tongue. Cloud wanted to fuck, but became determined to see this through to the end if Sephiroth was enjoying it so much. He forced it down past his gagging point, letting his throat involuntarily pulse around it before backing up with a gasp for air.

Before he could repeat the action, Sephiroth gripped a handful of Cloud's hair and held him at bay. Cloud looked up at him, mouth open and gasping for air. "... You alright?"

"'M tryin' not to come all over your face right now," Sephiroth admitted.

"You can if you want," Cloud invited, stretching out his tongue and making contact with the leaking slit before Sephiroth nudged him back again, and slid down the wall.

Once his ass touched the ground, Sephiroth tugged Cloud into his lap, and helped himself to two appreciative handfuls of his ass. "I want this."

Before Cloud could reply, Sephiroth teeth were plucking at the skin of his neck and shoulder, and hot, calloused hands were spreading wide across his thighs and ass. Cloud scooted closer, shuddering at the feeling of so much moist, heated skin pressed against him. He rubbed his erection against Sephiroth's, feeling his own saliva slide between their cocks.

Cloud pushed his hips against him desperately. "Seph... please help..."

"Hold still," Sephiroth instructed, licking his fingers before reaching behind him to press them between Cloud's ass cheeks.

Cloud's breath left him in a rush as those long fingers worked their way inside. He groaned a little against Sephiroth's shoulder, and couldn't help but glance over at himself in the mirror. For a moment he didn't feel the discomfort of being stretched because he hardly recognized himself; there was a disheveled blonde in the mirror who was being finger fucked by the most angelic creature the world had ever seen.

"You like lookin' at yourself?" Sephiroth asked softly, meeting his eyes in the mirror's reflection.

"No, I'm a train wreck," Cloud lied on a gust of laughter, taking a moment to wipe residual wetness off of his face. But his eyes remained fixed on the mirror as he arched his back a bit and moved against Sephiroth's fingers.

"You're gorgeous," He gave a small groan as he used his free hand to give Cloud's ass a firm smack.

Cloud gasped and squeezed his eyes shut, "Ah!"

"How do you wanna watch yourself get fucked?"

"I dunno..."

"Don't get shy now," Sephiroth said with humor in his tone but a smile absent from his face. He was concentrating on gently curving his fingers upwards while the rest of his palm cupped Cloud's balls from the outside. With literally an entire handful of Cloud, Sephiroth tightened his hold. "Talk to me."

When Cloud was aroused he usually wasn't one for much conversation or thought, but Sephiroth wanted an answer. He recaptured Cloud's intellectual attention by jabbing his fingers against his most sensitive inner spots, while his thumb and palm pushed his balls against his abdomen.

The sound Cloud made was definitely not one of pain, although he knew it had to have hurt a little. He eased up on his grip and repeated the question, "Tell me your favorite way to get fucked."

Cloud cupped the back of Sephiroth's neck and pulled him close. "Just take over."

"Missionary?" Sephiroth assumed, slightly confused.

"No... I don't mean the position. I could be on my back or stomach or even when I'm on top of you, doesn't matter. Just... I love it when you take it over. It's scary, but it's the best."

Sephiroth continued to move his fingers up inside of him, "Keep talkin' to me."

Cloud wet his lips, turning his head to watch the mirror. His eyes were drawn to the movements of Sephiroth's hands on him, the flicking of muscle beneath the skin of his forearm, and spread of bone beneath his free hand as it rested wide and dominant on his ass. "... Sometimes you scare the hell out of me. It's... like you're gonna snap at any moment... totally lose your mind and tear me apart. When I get kind of scared like that... it makes me come so hard."

Cloud turned his head back to gaze at Sephiroth, his bright blue eyes large, wet and yearning for some sort of reply. Sephiroth never saw a masochist there before, and he didn't see one now.

They both had similar needs, and a few different ones. But that was the interesting effect of being each other's first partner... they experienced everything for the first time together, and there was an unspoken agreement when things worked or didn't work.

Some things needed to be asked out loud though, and so Sephiroth asked in plain terms, "You want me to hurt you?"

"No! I think I'm the only person in the world you wouldn't ever hurt, and I like that feeling. But you're... you. When you're making love to me, you can't help but hurt me a little bit... and I think I like that feeling even more... I like having bruises. I also like leaving them on you..." Cloud sighed and hid his face back against Sephiroth's jaw. "I don't know what I'm saying, Seph. It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud. Why do you make me talk about this shit?"

"So you like it rough?" Sephiroth asked with a smile.

"... Maybe. But not rough like that stupid, cheesy whips and chains bullshit we sell in the store," Cloud quickly told him, wrinkling his nose a little at the thought of cliché accessories and cumbersome props cluttering up their love life. He dragged his blunt fingernails down Sephiroth's defined chest, certain that his body alone was going to be enough to excite him for life. "... I think I like when you're rough with me because you're so perfect, and I'm so ordinary... but I can give you something you need."

That was all that Sephiroth could take. He pulled his fingers from Cloud and grabbed his ass with both hands, pulling him as close as he could get. He was met with an eager kiss, and Sephiroth could taste himself on Cloud's lips. He growled mournfully at the lack of lubricant as the tip of his cock pushed against Cloud's tight hole.

Cloud pulled away with a sharp cry, and winced a little as he lowered himself onto it. His opening puckered around the tip of Sephiroth's cock, and he hissed in pain and frustration.

"Baby," Sephiroth said shakily, apologetically kissing his cheek as he eyed the exit. "You sell lube in the store, right?"

"There's some in my bag!" Cloud cried in remembrance.

Sephiroth dug his fingers into Cloud's hips and gave him a hot, frustrated kiss before pushing him away, "Well go fuckin' get it, what're ya waitin' for?"

"I was kinda busy!" Cloud sassed, his eyes lingering on the way Sephiroth gripped his own cock against the loss of body heat. He tore his attention away to retrieve his backpack.

He threw his clothes and Sephiroth's jacket across the dressing room in search of the small tube of Pleasureglide, and made a triumphant noise when he found it. With a giggle, he put it between his teeth, and did his sexiest Tyra Banks crawl back towards Sephiroth before dropping it onto the floor next to him.

He grinned, "I feel like Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary!"

"Get the fuck over here," Sephiroth demanded, a dark smile on his lips as he forced Cloud back into his lap. He took a dab of gel on his fingers and pushed them inside, hastily spreading just enough to get it in. He pulled them out and gave a moist smack to Cloud's ass as he urged him up higher onto his knees.

"Do that again," Cloud requested, and closed his eyes to savor the shock of stinging pain when it came to the other cheek. He could feel Sephiroth's heart thundering, and he raked his teeth along his collarbone. "Mm, again."

Sephiroth clapped both hands against Cloud's ass, and lifted him up by it. He positioned Cloud over his cock, and he could feel it twitching between his thighs, desperate to enter. Instead of complying, he returned the line of inquiry, "... Seph, what's your favorite part of like... sex with me?"

Sephiroth laughed a little and bumped the back of his head against the wall to gaze up at Cloud beneath lidded eyes. "Any time you forget that you're supposed to be shy an' embarrassed, and get down to business. It is so fuckin' hot when you make shit happen."

Cloud took the opportunity to sink down onto his cock, and the look of surprise on Sephiroth's smug face was well worth a shock of pain up his spine. He forced himself to keep his eyes open and watch Sephiroth's features melt down into a warm, heavy-lidded expression of satisfaction. Cloud then rose up on his knees a little, working himself to open up while watching Sephiroth's fine eyebrows push together.

Cloud paused there, breathing deeply and waiting for the tension in his lower body to ease up as he hugged Sephiroth's neck, "... Am I making shit happen?"

"Fuck yeah you are," Sephiroth agreed, leaning away from the wall to push his body against Cloud's, holding him close as he began to work himself down.

He let out a sigh against Sephiroth's skin, "Why can't my ass just expand and stay this size?"

"It wouldn't be fun if it was easy," Sephiroth laughed huskily, running his palms soothingly down Cloud's back. "... Is it bad for you?"

Cloud quickly shook his head, and took a breath before lifting up from Sephiroth's lap. "It's never bad. I want all of you inside."

"You can take it, baby."

It took time to establish something like a rhythm, but even the jerky, slow, experimental motions felt like bliss to Sephiroth. Cloud was always hot and tight, and his pretty pink hole hugged every inch of him. Just the tip inside was enough to make Sephiroth catch his breath, but digging in deep while Cloud's slim legs trembled against his outer thighs was almost torturous. He closed his eyes and worked to maintain control, allowing Cloud to ease himself slowly up and down.

Cloud was fixed on Sephiroth's face. His long, black eyelashes were splayed out against his cheekbones, and he looked so smooth, so delicate and pretty... until he opened his eyes. They glowed like the color of lust, punctuated only by two tiny black knife slits down the center.

They paralyzed Cloud, but he couldn't look away.

He saw Sephiroth's arm move out of the corner of his eye, so it came as no surprise when his hand circled around his cock. Cloud couldn't help but close his eyes then, and very carefully turned his ass up, only to come back down and work himself on Sephiroth's cock. Sephiroth seemed to like the way his hips began to move, and encouraged it through the rhythm of his actions.

Cloud rested his cheek against Sephiroth's shoulder, consumed with the sensation of taking his body in so deep. He finally couldn't breathe through his nose any longer, and gasped on air as he opened his mouth and began to moan. The sudden burst of sound awakened something in Sephiroth, and he was pushing and pulling on Cloud's hips to guide his movements. He wasn't gentle about it, and Cloud received another sharp slap on his ass.

He wasn't prepared for that one, and reared up to glare down at Sephiroth, but the anger was lost as he hit just the right angle. Cloud rewarded him with a beautiful sound between agony and bliss as he wriggled his hips in tiny, hesitant circles against that little spot.

Sephiroth loved the way Cloud moved, especially when he was on top. He was curious about seeing it from another angle, and turned his head to watch him ride his cock in the mirror. Cloud was sexy from the side, all slim, toned lines and fluid motion. He could also see the bottom of his shaft appearing and disappearing against the tight curve of Cloud's ass.

Suddenly it all stopped, and he felt a tug on his jaw. He faced Cloud, who was bashfully frowning down at him. "Don't look at that."

"Why not?" Sephiroth asked, nudging his hips against Cloud's to spur him back into motion.

"Just don't look over there, okay?" He pleaded earnestly. "... I want you to look at me."

"I'm lookin' at you, I promise."

Cloud buried both hands in Sephiroth's hair, keeping his head still and intently staring at his face for absolute terror of either of them looking at the mirror. He didn't want to know what he looked like while he was having sex, and he didn't want Sephiroth to look either. All he wanted to focus on was that shattering burst of pleasure every time he dropped down onto his lap, and not fret if he looked silly while he did so.

They eased back into the groove of making love to each other, and without even meaning to, Sephiroth glanced to the side out of curiosity. He was punished with a disgruntled noise from his lover and another tug on his chin.

Sephiroth couldn't understand Cloud's apprehension about the mirror, but knew it was holding him back from finally letting go completely. He couldn't be bothered with the distraction of Cloud's anxiety, and wanted to allow the moment to consume them both.

His arms flexed for a moment as he held onto Cloud, and used his feet to scoot himself across the floor. In a few short moments, Sephiroth's back was pressed against the mirror.

"What are you - " Cloud panted, not finishing the question as he stared at his reflection in confusion.

"I can't see it now," Sephiroth explained briefly, nudging himself up into Cloud to resume their previous beat. "I'm only lookin' at you, baby. Just keep doin' that..."

Cloud wilted slightly in his arms, utterly relieved by this solution. He eagerly found his pace again, and even worked himself a little faster and arched his back a little deeper now that he wasn't so insecure about how he might look reflected.

He didn't mind Sephiroth's hungry stare on his flesh, though. Sephiroth began to meet Cloud's breathless little sighs with a deep rumble in his chest, and with every pop of sweat slick skin against skin, he wrinkled his nose just a little.

Cloud kissed the wrinkle a few times, and then moved down to smother his soft, full lips with one. He dipped his tongue into the dangerous territory of his mouth, and felt Sephiroth's sharp teeth nip against it.

Cloud came up from the kiss with a gasp, and laced his fingers behind Sephiroth's neck. He bumped his forehead against Sephiroth's affectionately, bouncing on his thick cock until his thighs began to tremble in fatigue, and he buckled just slightly before going up onto his feet. He pushed himself down deep, then went on the balls of his feet until just the tip was gripped before dropping back down all the way.

"Now you got it," Sephiroth muttered, shoving his back against the mirror for some leverage to push his hips up against Cloud's ass.

Cloud dragged his cock against Sephiroth's body, rubbing it up between firm, defined rows of muscle. He stared at the sight of his cock drooling against Sephiroth's stomach, leaving a shiny trail of precome that pooled in his tight belly button. Cloud's eyes rolled back a little, and his entire chest broke out in a blood red blush. "Seph... Seph!"

"Shhhit," Sephiroth drawled, elongating the word throughout several up and down passes of Cloud's slim hips. He recognized the signs Cloud's body gave before he climaxed, and decided that he wasn't ready for it.

He let Cloud ride his cock until they both were on the cusp before shoving up on his hips. He was jerked out of Cloud's body with a wet pop, and Sephiroth's cock throbbed in the cold air of the room.

Cloud's entire body quaked, and he squawked down at him, "What are you - Mm!"

Sephiroth let Cloud drop back down onto him. The tension was faded and in the background, but after a few moments of pushing and breathing against each other, it began to build again. Cloud began to hiss Sephiroth's name through his teeth, red up to his ears and his long, rock hard cock sliding against his stomach.

Sephiroth felt his lower body tighten, his balls were heavy and tight against the underside of his cock. After a few more moments of slick, gripping heat, he feuded with his own mind, waiting for the very last moment before it was too late.

And then he hoisted Cloud off of his cock again, and curled his feet against the floor in self imposed torment.

"You're so fucking mean!" Cloud panted, his white teeth showing in anger.

"Wait a sec..." Sephiroth growled, swallowing deeply as he fought against what his body was craving. Prolonging it was turning out to be fun though, and he was curious to see how long he could stand it.

"Give it back," Cloud begged like a child who wanted their favorite toy, making his lower body heavy to possibly slip out of Sephiroth's hold.

Sephiroth took a breath and allowed Cloud to move, reconnecting with that snug, hot ass once again. Cloud shoved his hands against the mirror, planting himself in position, "Nng, Seph... that's so good right there."

"There?" Sephiroth asked, wriggling his hips up underneath Cloud to work whatever spot he'd found. "... Do you like edging?"

"I hate it," Cloud gasped, a desperate groan following as he finally comprehended what Sephiroth was doing. "Don't do it anymore. Let it go... I want you to come."

"Convince me," Sephiroth smiled.

"Let me fuck your cock," Cloud whispered. When he felt those strong fingers loosen on his hips, and he began to quickly bounce his ass up and down against Sephiroth's upper thighs. "Feels ... so... good..."

"Like that?" He grunted, holding onto Cloud's thighs but not guiding him. He instead twisted his fingers in the tight yellow nylon thigh highs and held on.

"Unh, yes," Cloud's smooth voice cracked into a squeaking growl. "Seph... please tell me you're close. Please, please, please."

"Not yet," Sephiroth warned, although it was a false threat because Cloud was a master of providing stimulation to every single one of Sephiroth's senses. He provoked Cloud though, forcing more like a true addict. "I don't wanna come yet."

"Come inside me," Cloud uttered against his ear.

Sephiroth's mouth parted wide, and he emitted a noise close to a whimper.

"Please, Sir, come inside me..." Cloud repeated, finding a dark thrill in saying these words out loud after years of thinking them while he touched himself. He set a steady, punctuated beat, a delicious tension tightening between them. Every drop of his hips keyed that tension higher, and soon Cloud was crying out and ready to let go.

"Come inside me, Sephiroth," Cloud sobbed, every part of his body working to milk his lover. "Please do it... for me... I wanna feel you... come inside me, Seph - "

There was a sudden, helpless cry from Sephiroth. He ripped Cloud's tights like paper and grabbed the bare flesh between his fingers, a flood of palpable heat rushing from Sephiroth's pores like a volcano. Cloud felt like lava was pouring over him, up inside him, and melting every part that it touched.

A wave of pure adrenaline shocked an orgasm out of Cloud that stole his breath, and ripped through his body inside and out. He thrashed against Sephiroth, grinding his cock through a release that shot up high enough to hit Sephiroth's face. He could still feel Sephiroth throbbing hard inside, and he heard himself shouting his name over and over as he desperately held on.

Sephiroth felt his semen run down his cock and over his balls, but kept pushing up his hips in an effort to see Cloud's pleasure through to the end. After a few more moments, he was so sensitized that he had no choice but to push Cloud's hips up to separate from him. He felt a hot stream of his own release follow, and shuddered through another aftershock.

Cloud blinked wearily at him before dropping against him like dead weight, so wet with sweat that it looked like he'd just stepped out of a shower. He wasn't sure if Cloud needed one, but he didn't ask before tossing a Cure on him.

Cloud didn't move or respond at all. He was completely spent, and Sephiroth might have panicked if he couldn't feel his heartbeat and deep breathing against his shoulder. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers through the soaked, short hair sticking to the back of Cloud's neck.

"Hey," Sephiroth eventually said.

"Hm?"

"You alive?"

"Brains ...fucked out."

Sephiroth laughed and squeezed him into a brief hug, "Let's get outta here."

"Mmm," Cloud whined wordlessly, lifting his head off Sephiroth's shoulder. An unexpected, wide smile was hiding there, and he tilted his head. "... Got your face."

"Huh?"

Cloud leaned in and brushed his tongue against Sephiroth's jaw, taking away a large glop of his own creamy white semen. He seemed to like his own taste, and sucked the remaining drops off of Sephiroth's cheek and chin.

He licked his lips with a smile, "Did... something weird happen just now?"

"You licked your own jizz off my face."

Cloud giggled, "No... I mean... You got so hot..."

"I'm always hot," Sephiroth shrugged.

Cloud gave him a sideways smile before leaning back and moving away from him. He slipped off his shredded tights and used them to wipe his ass and between his legs, and then shimmied into his jeans. Sephiroth took the time to stretch and crawl lazily up onto his feet.

He was stepping into his pants when Cloud let out a shrill screech of terror. "Sephiroth! What the hell is that?"

"What?" he asked, following the point of Cloud's outstretched finger to the floor, where a smoking, ass-shaped burn mark tarnished the tile floor.

"I knew something weird happened!" Cloud crowed, going onto his knees next to the ass print and wiping at it with his finger. It was still extremely hot, and he waved his hand through the air with a scowl. "This is exactly like the time you melted your shoes! Is this something weird with you? Do you have materia equipped or something? Are you on the verge of like, causing a supernova 24/7?"

"No..." Sephiroth was extremely embarrassed, but kept it hidden as he physically shrugged it off and resumed pulling his pants on.

Cloud laughed and poked at the mark again, "It smells like burnt cookies! And it's not coming up. That's a full on scorch mark!"

"Sorry," Sephiroth said, but didn't sound like he meant it. He shoved his feet into his boots and lingered near the door. "That's never happened to me before."

"Now we know not to let you edge yourself..." Cloud seemed incredibly disappointed. "I guess I won't ever be able to tie you up. Damn!"

Sephiroth's cheeks were flushed a sugar pink. "Can we go?"

"How do I explain this to my boss?"

"Whaddaya mean?" Sephiroth asked, one foot out the door. "Nobody'll blame you. Say you found the room like that, they'll think some dumbass customer did it."

Cloud looked down at the burn, and tried to reason in his mind what else it could be. But there was simply no mistaking it, "It's an ass print, though. How do you burn an ass onto tile? This requires some form of an explanation."

"You said you were quittin' anyways."

"Yeah... maybe... I didn't wanna wreck shit before I left, though."

Sephiroth gave his handiwork an appraising frown. "... I have a nice ass."

"Yeah it's a work of art, but that's not the point. I have to come up with a story for this."

"Do it in less than two minutes, because I'm hungry."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Gus arrived at Dirty Rubbers around noon the following day. He'd come to expect the place to be extremely clean after help from Cloud, and wasn't disappointed. All of the grunt work that the other employees refused to do was accomplished in one short shift - the mannequins were redressed, the place was orderly and spotless, and every dime was accounted for. The honest foreign kid didn't even help himself to some cash from the register - a model employee.

Gus was surprised to see a loose piece of paper taped to the counter, and picked it up curiously. In what appeared to be Cloud's bubbly handwriting, it read:

To the Gus it may concern;

When you go into the dressing room, you will find a very odd stain on the floor by the mirror. It is, I daresay, a burn mark.

I am a man of Catholic faith, and I believe that it is a sign from the Lifestream

You know how those ladies out in Correl sometimes see like, the Virgin Mary on burnt toast? Well, I believe that burn mark on your tile floor is the ass print of Jesus Christ. I don't know who else in the galaxy would have such a bouncy, toned buttocks.

It's an unexplainable, supernatural phenomenon. I don't know why your store was chosen for the holy buttprint of the Lord and Savior, but it is and I hope you feel as blessed as I do.

See you next Wednesday!

Touched by Jesus,

Cloud Strife.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Angeal Hewley's seminar began at 4:10pm on Friday afternoon. Coach Dunn had made it clear that there would be a roll call, and then the bus was leaving by 4:20. Whoever wasn't on it was shit out of luck.

When his final class of the day ended at 4:00, Cloud hurried to his locker to change into fresh fatigues, boots, and his future SOLDIER hoodie. He then grabbed his bag before making his way to the parking lot.

Cloud had already resigned himself to the fate that he was going to smell bad and be ugly all weekend long, so he packed light. All he had were the clothes on his back, an extra shirt, a couple pairs of boxer briefs, a box of bonbons, his cell phone, and his mp3 player to listen to at night. That was all he needed to survive the weekend.

He didn't really think about like, food or a tent or anything. He realized he might have made a mistake when he noticed the amount of shit the other boys were toting - multiple duffle bags, tent kits, a nerd with a rolling suitcase. One guy had a fucking trunk with him.

Cloud got into lineup in front of the bus with his mostly empty shoulder bag, a feeling of doom creeping up on him. He thought back to what he'd learned about wilderness survival in classes, and decided that he'd just nosh on whatever mushrooms he came across. Either he'd trip or die, and both were preferable to this stupid seminar.

Cloud stopped mentally bitching when Angeal Hewley came striding up to the group with a couple of eager, helmeted assistants following closely behind him. They were practically prancing through the snow to keep up with his long legs.

Angeal was a fucking hunk. He was hotter than Wolverine, larger than life itself, and had one of the most piercing gazes that Cloud had ever seen. Sephiroth was an exotic, otherworldly beauty that demanded worship, and Genesis was a polished, handsome brat that screamed upper class privilege. But Angeal came off as an everyday man who worked hard to become what he was, and was everything that a boy wanted to be when he grew up.

If Cloud could trade bodies with Angeal, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

Cloud had spent a little time with him over the past year, and Angeal was always extremely polite, even tempered, and eating something. But while his personality was warm and calm, from what he knew and from what Sephiroth had dished, Angeal was a prowler and a bisexual opportunist.

Cloud found him a little bit fascinating.

"Let's take roll, everyone line up," Angeal announced, clapping his hands a few times as he swaggered back and forth a few steps. He was relaxed and in his element, a born teacher.

There were twenty spaces on the weekend seminar, and nineteen boys had shown up. The missing boy had been hurt in a Materia incident, and was excused from the weekend without repercussion. Once everyone was accounted for, Angeal folded his hands behind his back and walked the line-up, his face full of gentle, constructive criticism although he said nothing.

Angeal looked directly at Cloud, who schooled his features to maintain a passive expression of militant respect.

A dark smile emerged on Angeal's face. He didn't stop walking, but his low voice rumbled a message that was unmistakable. "Seph told me to break you."

Taylor was standing next to Cloud in the lineup, and once Angeal was out of earshot he whispered down, "Did he say what I think he just said?"

"Yeah," Cloud giggled with a gulp. "He's teasing. I kind of know him. It's our thing, our little inside joke, our rapport - "

"Who's the best swordsman in this class?" Angeal called out, arms crossed jovially over his broad chest. "I want a name."

Nobody spoke. A full minute of silence passed the lineup of boys, who were all unsure, uncomfortable, and unwilling to answer incorrectly to a General.

Angeal turned to their teacher, "Coach Dunn, these are your boys. Who's the best in class?"

"Gotta be Cloud Strife," Coach Dunn supposed.

The rest of the cadets eyed him wearily. Phillip, a lanky guy with a deep purple birth mark covering a good portion of his throat chimed in, "Cloud's the best, for sure."

"I think he's pretty good," Taylor agreed. The rest of the peanut gallery was reluctant, but did concede to the fact that Cloud was an okay swordsman, kinda sorta maybe, if they had to pick someone who outshined the rest.

Cloud was blushing ferociously.

"The word on the street is that it's you, Strife," Angeal said to him. "And that makes you my favorite student for the whole weekend. My favorite student always gets to load the bags onto the bus."

Cloud's mouth dropped open.

Angeal raised an arm, "Alright, gang! Get on, take a seat, relax. We've got a long ride out of this dump of a city to the foothills. Cloud, you've got three minutes to get this luggage loaded and your ass in a seat, or we're leaving without you."

And with that, General Hewley dropped his bags to the ground and pranced up the steps to the bus with the assistants in tow. The other cadets quickly followed, purposely not looking at Cloud as he stood there in shock.

"Have an educational weekend," Coach Dunn gave him a wave before turning back to the school.

Cloud began to collect everyone else's bags and toss them carelessly into the open luggage compartment.

Immeasurable privilege, indeed.

A/N

CHAPTER IMAGE! - owmyhearteries.deviantart.com/#/d5orlmv

1 - Here's the anniversary CD that Sephiroth worked so hard on for Cloud :

Underworld - Born Slippy

The Black Keys - Tighten Up

Violent Femmes - Promise

Friendly Fires - Hurting

M83 - Midnight City

Ladyhawke - Magic

Arcade Fire - Wake Up

Modest Mouse - Sleepwalkin'

TV On the Radio - Love Dog

2 – Thanks for being so patient, it's been a while. I've been pretttty busy this year, what with having two jobs for most of the year, taking 5 classes each semester, so on and so forth. I'm REALLY happy to have this chapter ready, and am very happy to report that the next chapter is almost finished as well! Ahead? MOI? Maybe it IS the end of the world today. But damn it, I updated!


	30. Braver

Cloud was haphazardly tossing his classmate's shit onto the lower compartment of the bus with very little regard to the potentially breakable contents. The bigger stuff he couldn't hurl quite as far, but he tried. He was nearly done when yet another bag dropped onto the ground next to him.

He was surprised to find a familiar face. "Hey Skylar! What are you doing here?"

"I'm coming on the seminar, too!" He grinned. "The sheet was mostly full of people in your Sword Tactics class, so I didn't get a spot. I signed up as an alternate though; I guess some guy got sick or something. So they had room for me."

Cloud was listening, but was currently trying to groin bump a fairly large wooden trunk into the bus compartment. Once it was in, he wiped his raw hands on his fatigues and attempted to make a pleasant facial expression. "That's great! It'll be more fun with you going!"

Skylar watched while Cloud threw more bags onto the bus. "Why are you stuck doing this by yourself?"

"Don't ask," Cloud cut him off, because he needed to fully process this situation before he let his emotions run away with him. Something awful could happen in that event, like breaking down in tears in front of his class and General Hewley. Instead he focused on the joy of having an ally, "Help me load the rest of this stuff, would you?"

Skylar most certainly did not, and was instead satisfied to watch Cloud work.

When Cloud was finished, he reached up to close the compartment door. To his dismay and Skylar's amusement, he had to jump up to reach it. After a couple of tries, he got the thing closed down and secure.

"You are no help at all," Cloud panted, wiping his damp forehead despite the light, wispy afternoon snowfall. He grabbed Skylar's waist and pulled him to the bus, where he stomped up the steps to face Angeal and his assistants.

"You took way too long. You have us at a minute and a half behind schedule," Angeal barked at him.

"I found a straggler, Sir!" Cloud declared with a tug on Skylar's waist.

Angeal's face changed completely, relaxing from a shrewd scowl to a soft, handsome smile. "Hello... Why weren't you in line up?"

Skylar pulled his arm from around Cloud's shoulder to stand at attention. "I was called in as a replacement for another student, Sir."

"That's right, I called him in," one of Angeal's assistants interjected, a Junior SOLDIER with a buzz cut that exposed an oddly shaped head and huge ears. He looked at his clipboard and made a check with his pen. "So your name is... uh... wow - "

"Your sheet might say Sakol Thanwarattanamangkul - but my Shin-Ra draft name is Skylar Than," he quickly supplied, raising his badge to prove it. He was very used to having trouble when people needed to learn his name for any reason.

"Say your real name again?" Angeal asked with a wince, leaning over to see the name written on the clipboard to compare it to what was on Skylar's badge.

"Well, Skylar Than is my real name - "

"Say your real real name," Angeal insisted.

This was music to Cloud's ears, and he relished not having the weirdest name on the bus. Skylar's great-grandparents had immigrated from Wutai, making him one of the few Wutainese members of the Shin-Ra army. He was definitely the only one in their class year, which made Skylar stand out for many reasons - mostly that he was fucking exotic and gorgeous, and also because he had a really crazy, long ass name.

"Skylar Tan, then?" Angeal clarified, mispronouncing even the drastically shortened version of Skylar's name.

"Yes Sir," he nodded respectfully, not even slightly interested in correcting the pronunciation.

"You and Strife take a seat. We're four minutes behind schedule!" Angeal gave Cloud a rough, careless shove down the bus aisle that sent him stumbling all the way to row M, and then gently guided Skylar's bare shoulder to follow.

It seemed that each boy needed his own private seat to stretch out or lie down on, and so every bench was occupied all the way to the back of the fucking bus. The back of the bus was where the most potent motion sickness happened, but Cloud had no other option besides finding someone's lap to sit on. There was a choice of a normal sized bench, and this little half bench loser seat.

Cloud peered up behind his shoulder at Skylar, who towered six inches over him. And he was Wutainese. Weren't they supposed to be short, too? It wasn't fair. "I guess you assume I'm taking the small seat."

"It's the perfect size for you," Skylar agreed.

With an irritable sigh, Cloud chose the tiny bitch seat, giving the bigger boy more room.

"Don't make that face," Skylar chuckled, and dropped down onto Cloud's lap. "Fine, I'll take the smallest seat on the bus."

"Get off of me!" Cloud cried, pounding two fists against Skylar's back.

"That feels good, go higher." Skylar leaned into the abuse as though it was a massage.

"General Hewley!" Cloud screamed childishly.

The man stood up like a demonic vision of darkness at the head of the bus. "I don't wanna hear a word from anybody until we get to the camp site."

The bus became silent. Skylar quickly slithered off Cloud's lap and to his seat, where he stayed low below the seat line. They peered at each other with wide eyes, before both of them began giggling all over again.

Across the aisle and ahead two seats, Taylor peeked back at Cloud. "Pssst."

"What?" Cloud mouthed at him.

Taylor glanced up to make sure Angeal wasn't looking, and crept back to kneel next to Cloud's seat. Well, he was a little bit too huge to creep effectively, but he put in a little bit of effort into the act. "Hey Cloud, I don't mean to be nosy, but... isn't Sephiroth your, uh...?"

Cloud sighed and gave his practiced response for when anyone asked him about his life partner. "Yes. We're very happy and in love."

"So... what'd you do to him?"

"Huh?"

"Angeal said, 'Seph told me to break you'. Obviously you did something, so what'd you do? Why are you in the doghouse?"

Skylar's ears perked at this topic of conversation. "You having trouble with General Sephiroth?"

"No! I didn't do anything! He and Angeal are just... I think they're giving me tough love." Cloud sat up straight and wagged a finger as it dawned on him. "Ohh, that's it! They think I'm going to whine and bitch and complain, so that way Sephiroth can finally convince me that I'm just a prissy queen and not cut out for SOLDIER!"

"It's kind of true," Skylar observed, before he weighed the statement against the forlorn look Cloud gave him. "Just kidding."

"You better be! Taylor thinks that I'm best swordsman in the class!" Cloud wailed. "Tell him, Taylor."

The big hulking boy shrank down a little in shame. "You are pretty good... but I'm not sure if you're the type to actually use the talent. You're way too pretty."

"And Sephiroth isn't pretty?" Cloud challenged.

"Uh..." Taylor blinked as though that thought had never occurred to him before. "I guess he is."

"He's not that pretty," Skylar commented.

"There are pretty SOLDIERs, there are manly SOLDIERs and there are SOLDIERs who are downright fucking ugly. It shouldn't matter what someone looks like as long as they're good at what they do!" Cloud was furious, but paused to smoothly brush the bangs out of his eyes and lift his chin up arrogantly. "You're probably just jealous."

Taylor seemed a bit baffled by this accusation, and was sheepishly backpedaling, "I didn't mean to make you feel bad, Cloud. You're a really good cadet, but it's just hard to picture you..."

"You don't think you can fight alongside a gay man?" Cloud prodded, ready to call Rufus Shin-Ra, Oprah, and Lady Gaga to back him up on this human equality issue. "You think I'm gonna try to fuck you during a mission? You think I'm not going to have your back when shit gets tough? I'll have you know I'm a fucking veteran of the Northern Crater battle and I had everyone's back all the time! I mean... I was unarmed so I was literally behind them - but not in a gay kind of way. In a SOLDIER way."

Skylar butted in, "Over a third of the army is homosexual. Even General Sephiroth is, obviously."

Cloud nodded, "Genesis, too! I think Angeal's bi or something."

Taylor was bright pink. "I... don't think, uh... sexual... orientation... really matters. I mean, I can admit you're a way better cadet than I am. But you're also one of the only people here who's ever been nice to me. You're nice to almost everybody, even when they're assholes who make fun of you. I guess it's hard to imagine you, like... killing people."

"Oh."

"You're also the only person who's ever told me I'm cute," he admitted. "I guess I think of you as like... a gir -"

"Nope," Cloud warned.

"Yeah that was a bit far," he quickly agreed.

"I do think you're cute, though," Cloud smiled.

Taylor only smiled with half of his face out of awkwardness, but it still pushed in a dimple. "Well... I think you'll be a good SOLDIER. Sorry if I offended you."

"You did, but I forgive you. Let's have a make-up kiss," Cloud invited, leaning forward.

That concept exorcised Taylor from the back of the bus, and he clumsily hobbled back up to his seat.

"I think I deserve a Nobel Prize," Cloud sighed demurely at Skylar. "I'm a pretty positive and awesome ambassador for the homosexual community."

"They don't award Nobel prizes for being a huge tease," Skylar observed.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean""

"How many times a day do you threaten to fuck, blow, kiss, or impregnate straight guys?"

"A few..."

"Dozen? That's like your signature go-to response for pretty much any confrontation."

"I have to stand up to these big jock assholes somehow... I've always been made fun of for being the way I am..." Cloud shrugged a shoulder. "I might as well do it first."

"You make a joke of yourself, though."

"I like making people laugh."

"Fair enough," Skylar tucked himself sideways on the seat and rested his head against the window. "... But I'm waiting for the day when someone actually takes you up on one of those offers and totally rape-kisses you."

Cloud settled back into his tiny seat and huffed in bemusement. He chewed his thumbnail and let his mind wander over the subjects of teasing, of jokes, of being bullied... by Sephiroth, his mean lesbian friends, and now his fellow Generals.

That conniving snake of a man. He and his big muscular-thighed friend Angeal thought they were going to 'break' him, did they? They had news coming! It took more than a little military meanness to break Cloud Duffy Strife. He was never more in his element than when he was being bullied. He would handle anything they tried to throw at him!

With... aplomb! If that's what that word meant. Cloud wasn't quite sure.

One thing that he was sure of was that Sephiroth had to pay. Cloud thrust his hand into his bag and felt around for his phone. Without even taking a moment to check for texts, he turned it off and vowed to not turn it back on again for the entire weekend. He wasn't going to call whining to Sephiroth, he wasn't going to text him with updates, and he wasn't going to go to the apartment when he got back from the trip.

He was going to swagger back to his dorm room and wait for the General to come crawling to him. And then Cloud was going to top him, just for the hell of it.

Yeah! Sephiroth was his bitch, and Cloud was going to remind him of that!

Just when he was feeling most dominant and badass, a wave of putrid nausea washed over him like a fog. The bus hit a bump and made his stomach quiver, and he shrank down onto himself before waving one arm in Skylar's direction. "Hey, do you have anything?"

"Like what?" Skylar asked, pulling one of his headphones away from his ear.

"I get carsick," Cloud complained. "I forgot my medicine."

"Want a cookie?"

Cloud blinked, "What kind of cookie?"

Skylar gave him a dry look. "You know what kind of cookie."

Cloud gasped, "You brought those on a seminar?"

Skylar shrugged. "I get really sore. Weed's natural; it's better for you than over the counter pain killers. It's also supposed to help with nausea - my mom smoked it all during her pregnancy with me."

"This explains so much about you." Cloud smiled, snaking a hand up his shirt to rub his nauseated tummy. Somehow touching it from the outside helped, and he swallowed down a little bit of hyper salivation. "Fuck. I think I'm gonna throw up for real."

"Just try one, they're mild. It's not gonna hurt you," Skylar offered, a little transfixed by the sight of Cloud's hand rubbing back and forth across his tight, tan abs.

The kid sitting in front of him peered over the seat line at Skylar. "Can I have one of those?"

"Sure," Skylar said, blinking out of his trance. He pulled out a small paper bag and let the kid take a couple, and then held it out to Cloud.

He shook his head, "I can't. I always get caught doing shit. Leave it to me to get high one time, and then be randomly tested and thrown out of the army."

Skylar was ready. "Rule 14b : Any narcotic or steroid found in a cadet's system will result in a dishonorable discharge from the academy. Marijuana does not fall into either of those categories, I checked with the Dean myself."

"You asked the Dean if you could eat pot cookies?" Cloud asked doubtfully.

"I'm Wutainese. My grandma sent me these cookies in a care package," he said with a chuckle. "But if you get tested for whatever reason, you have to rat out whoever gave it to you, and you get a write up. So if by some miracle you do get caught, nothing's gonna happen to me."

"You mean you get a pass for being Wutainese? That's racist!"

"It's the best kind of racism ever," Skylar pointed out.

"Well I'm from Nibelheim. So if I get caught, I still get written up," Cloud pouted. "Then my mom will find out."

"A SOLDIER who never got written up in the Academy is a total pussy," the kid sitting in front of Skylar interjected with his cheeks full of tainted weed cookie.

"... I'm telling you. I know myself, I know my life. Somehow this will bite me in the ass." Cloud moaned in queasy sickness as the bus took a sharp curve onto the highway out of the city. "Somehow... my mother will find out."

"Then vomit all over yourself," Skylar shrugged.

They hit a large bump at that moment, and Cloud moaned again against the back of his seat. They had at least three hours to drive to the camp site, and he was now steadily hyper-salivating. Any relief was welcome, "Alright... give me a damn cookie."

"It's really not a big deal," Skylar promised, letting Cloud take the bag. "I started smoking with my dad when I was eight."

Cloud thought back to when he first began taking shots of liquor with his mother and stealing her cigarettes, and realized he had been roughly the same age. By the time he was twelve, he was adding vodka to his soda after school without even having to ask for permission.

That was normal in Nibelheim, so pot was normal for Wutai. He still hesitated, though. "What's gonna happen to me? I've never been high before. Will I spend the rest of my life chasing the dragon?"

Skylar gave him a pained look, clearly unwilling to acknowledge such a stupid statement. "... No, nothing like that happens. Since it's your first time you probably won't even get high, you'll just feel mellow and the nausea might fade a little. You'll probably come back down before we get to the camp site."

"I don't think I've ever felt mellow in my whole life," Cloud thought aloud. Even in the warmest of Sephiroth's embraces, the back of his mind was always filled with concerns about Sephiroth's comfort, his lover's feelings and intentions, the future, his to-do list, and willing himself desperately not to fart in his sleep.

Even though Sephiroth deserved a fucking Dutch oven for meddling in his seminar weekend. Telling Angeal to target him was a low-down tactic, designed to punish him for the mere fact of being too busy to be at his beck and call. Why did their quality time always have to be on Sephiroth's schedule? Did Sephiroth really love him at all, or did he just love being adored and sexually worshipped by someone else? If Cloud became a SOLDIER and faced the rigorous lifestyle and schedule, would Sephiroth's interest in him wane? Was that the reason Sephiroth didn't want him to become a SOLDIER -

With a small cry, Cloud quickly shot up to his knees, shoved his window down and vomited up his soul. A few drivers in traffic honked at him, but he couldn't tell if it had actually hit anyone's car - he was too busy retching up droplets of stomach acid.

Cloud felt a few soothing hands on his back. One of Angeal's assistants brought him a bottle of water, and he took it gratefully. He drank small sips as he hung halfway out of the small window and collected himself. Vomiting was so traumatic, and it felt like he did it way more often than any human being deserved.

After rinsing his mouth out with clean water and spitting a few times, he came back inside but was feeling no better. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, until he heard a brown paper bag rattle softly beside his head.

"Do me a favor and please eat one," Skylar begged. "It makes me sick to see other people be sick."

"Anything to shut you up," Cloud groaned, sticking his hand into the bag and selecting a cookie. They were small, and looked like they might have tasted like peanut butter.

In reality they tasted nothing like peanut butter, and instead lacked any discernible flavor that Cloud could think of. The closest thing he could imagine that they tasted likes were vegetables in cookie form. After choking one down with a few gulps of water, he didn't even feel any better.

"What flavor cookie was that?" Cloud grimaced.

"Sugar snap peas," Skylar answered, nibbling on one. "It's a savory cookie. My favorite."

"Wutainese food is so disgusting," Cloud muttered, and curled a little to press his knees into the seat in front of him and face the window.

Slowly, the motion faded slightly into the background. It became almost soothing. He shut his eyes and let the bus rock him to sleep.

A little while later when they'd exited the city and the temperature began to drop into late afternoon lows, Skylar reached over Cloud and shut his window. He then pulled a jacket out of his bag and draped it over him.

After spending a moment appreciating the innocent vision Cloud made while he slept, Skylar decided it wasn't so bad being friend zoned by the cutest boy in school. He leaned down and dared to give a small kiss to the tip of Cloud's nose. He was tempted to go for his parted lips, but the kid did just recently vomit.

It might have been worth it, though.

The thing with Sephiroth would run its course. All relationships did.

Skylar would try to remain satisfied with stolen kisses until then.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

There wasn't a single acceptable item of clothing in the SOLDIER wing that would fit the clone's stupid little kid body.

He snuck into several rooms, the laundry facility, and even the uniform depot - which was unfortunately still being constructed and totally empty. Everything fell off of his tiny frame, even with a belt cut to the smallest possible fit.

As it was, he was creeping around the base in an Eminem concert t-shirt and a pair of red plaid boxer shorts. There was no possible way he was going to face the harsh cold of the Northern Crater in that, though. He'd probably get frostbite on what little balls he had left, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take.

The base had no idea that there was an intruder in their midst. It was good that nobody had crossed his path, because he was way too hungry to kill anyone at that moment. Witnesses had to be disposed of though, or else his new lease on life was going to come to an abrupt end in the fucking Shin-Ra medical lab.

Sephiroth stopped to crouch down low, closing his eyes as his vision swam a bit. He was absolutely fucking starving. It occurred to him that this stupid little kid body had never eaten before.

He crept into the cafeteria, and first tried to reach his skinny arm up into the vending machine to steal something, but the design of the drop panel prevented theft. He considered just breaking it open, but it wasn't worth the commotion, and he really didn't feel like chips and candy bars were going to do much for the ravenous hunger he felt.

He then snuck into the kitchen, where there was a fully operational buffet lunch line with enticing military ration menu. But all the food needed to be cooked, which meant mess, time, and evidence left behind. Sephiroth then found several packed lunches with names marked on them stored in the refrigerator, and took as many as he could fucking carry.

"Hey!" an older woman called after him. "Where do you think you're going?"

It was a food service worker. Sephiroth slit her throat with one of the kitchen knives and put her in the freezer behind some crates. She only had a few gil on her, but it was enough to get a much needed energy drink.

While he was eating everyone else's lunch in a bathroom stall, a thought occurred to him.

Turks were going to be stationed at this base, too... meaning Turks were probably already there. Meaning fit, young females. Meaning smaller clothes. Meaning underwear that hadn't rubbed up against a stranger's dick.

At the prospect of getting someone's used underwear off of his body, he went quickly ate to his contentment and then rushed to the Turk side of the base.

After a few empty rooms, and the room of a larger male, he managed to find a petite lady's room and raided her suitcases. Her yoga panties were nice and fit well, but her purple Victoria's Secret sweatpants were still way too long. He compensated by stuffing the bottoms into a pair of small boots that he was able to lace up to almost fit. He also took a plain black t-shirt, a blue sweater, and then bundled up into a fashionable brown parka with a fuzzy hood.

He looked really fucking stupid. But at least he wouldn't freeze to death on the journey back to Midgar. With the hood up he looked harmless; he could easily pass for a little girl.

Before he left her room, he also helped himself to her supply of petty cash, which Turks always carried while on the go. He left the room in such a way that the break in wasn't too obvious, but any decent Turk was going to know she'd been robbed pretty much immediately.

He considered staying around to just kill her and be done with it, but was kind of in a hurry.

Sephiroth crept down onto the airship runway, beginning to love the ease of stealth that such a tiny body afforded him. He could see a few smaller choppers being loaded or unloaded, their propellers turning lazily while the crews went about their business. Beyond that, a larger airship was resting on the tarmac, an unhurried crew fueling it.

Sephiroth didn't know where it was going, but figured it was his best chance to get the fuck out of the Northern Crater. Anywhere in the world was better. He had enough cash on him to get some real clothes, rest for a day or two, and find some transportation to Midgar.

But he was a little kid... It wasn't like he could just rent a car, or check into a hotel, or buy a train ticket. If the airship went somewhere too far away, he'd be stuck getting back to Midgar by more primitive means... Walking, hitchhiking, or maybe riding a smelly chocobo. It's not like it would have been hard, but it'd leave a path littered with more dead bodies.

Nobody who saw him could live. It'd be a lot of work.

So if he was going to stow away on the airship, he had to gather intelligence regarding its destination and purpose. Sephiroth leaned on his cheek with a sigh. He was stressed, fatigued, and wanted nothing more than to talk to someone, to get some advice or help. There were dozens of people he wished he could call... he had a fantastic support network that he'd taken for granted for so long.

He felt as though he'd wasted so much time emotionally wounded and moody, a little unappreciative of everything he had... He'd always lived in the past, dwelled on what he'd never had and failed to see what he did have. But now, seeing it now from afar and from a fresh young perspective, Sephiroth realized that he really should have loved his life and lived it with a burning passion. He used to have everything he could possibly desire.

Why hadn't Sephiroth been happier? In this new incarnation, he really didn't know.

The older Sephiroth would never be able to see their life the way the newer version did. He was going to do his original self a favor, put him out of his misery and take it all back, and appreciate it more than the other ever possibly could.

Sephiroth stopped musing and instead pulled out the stolen cell phone. He had a plan.

He thought for a moment before deciding that it wouldn't hurt to call Cloud just to hear his gentle, accented voice... but it went straight to his voicemail.

So instead Sephiroth coughed and worked up some phlegm to imitate an older, deeper voice, and dialed Shin-Ra HQ. After jumping through a few hoops, he managed to talk to the Northern Crater air dispatch, and figured out that the huge airship was going to Mideel.

But after some high pitched persuasion from the General, the airship would stop in Midgar first, at the airport that was closest to the slums. He wouldn't even risk going to the upper plate, and would instead hide within the huddled masses.

Aerith lived down there.

Gross. What a judgmental, feminist cunt. What a liberal, self-righteous twat. What a worthless, anti-Shin-Ra, flower growing hippie...

What a beautiful, bright young enterprising lady! She absolutely hated Sephiroth! Maybe he could convince her to help kill him once and for all! She might be the perfect ally!

If not, he'd just kill her. Then he could hide at her place in peace, and figure out how to kill Sephiroth himself.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud didn't have a dad to teach him how to play baseball. He had a boyfriend though, which was far better in his opinion.

He didn't like his afternoon baseball class one bit, because there was just too much gay innuendo associated with baseball terminology. Being the only homosexual in class, God help him if he made a great catch, and any day he was trapped on the pitcher's mound was a bad one. Even when it was his turn to be umpire, everyone made fun of his accent when he announced the calls. It was a tough crowd.

Playing with Sephiroth in the park after school was much more fun. There were no humiliating team selections to endure, and no need to try to impress him or apologize if he fucked up. And Sephiroth would never tease him for throwing like a girl... because Sephiroth's natural feline grace caused him to throw way more girly than he did.

In the realm of baseball, Cloud was a better pitcher.

But with all the excitement of Cloud's progression in Sword Training, they were focused on that instead of baseball.

Sephiroth swung the bat with a smile on his face. "Know how everyone has a personal space bubble? When you're usin' any weapon you make a bubble like that for yourself."

"With your sword it's pretty easy to do," Cloud had commented dryly. "You have a fucking seven foot long bubble."

"It's not the length of the weapon that creates the bubble, though. If you point it straight out and you leave 359 degrees completely open, and even doin' that for a second is too much -"

"I know that," Cloud said indignantly. "I should always strive to keep the length of the blade parallel to the ground."

"Parallel isn't the best; go for this angle. And you keep someone at a distance with this sort of motion here." Sephiroth demonstrated by swinging the baseball bat in a wide, low arc.

Cloud took the bat and confidently tried the move out.

Sephiroth sighed. "How many times do I gotta tell you to use your fuckin' left hand?"

"How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not fucking left-handed?"

"You can be if you try. C'mere. Don't hold it like a fuckin' axe." Sephiroth forced the bat into Cloud's left hand, moving the positioning of his fingers for the best grip. "Your forefinger and thumb need to be kept lined up to maneuver the weapon."

Once Cloud held it to Sephiroth's liking he attempted to mimic the move as Sephiroth had shown him, but instead it ended in a limp swing of his arm. "I can't hold it like you do. It doesn't feel right."

"Because that hand is weak right now," Sephiroth said, watching Cloud with an air of worry.

"The only thing I do better with my left hand is jerk off," Cloud dared to suggest, swinging the bat towards Sephiroth and stopping short - only to poke him gently in the stomach.

Sephiroth brought his knee up and bopped the bat right out of Cloud's hand. It clattered to the ground and he shook his head. "Right handed swordsmen are predictable. You can learn to use the left one if you try."

"What if I was trying to make you use your right hand?" Cloud challenged.

"If you were better than me, I'd do it."

Cloud realized it wasn't fair to have his own personal guru to teach him tricks, but when it came to the SOLDIER exam he didn't give a flying fuck. He had to deal with what he had available to him, and that happened to be one of the greatest swordsmen that ever lived. That swordsman was left handed fighter, so Cloud would try to become one as well.

Cloud wasn't asleep, but didn't necessarily want to be awake as the bus neared the campsite. He didn't know why he chose to think back to baseball with Sephiroth in the park. Maybe it was the piney, outside smell of the wilderness reminded him of rolling in the fake upper plate grass. The notion of becoming a better swordsman over the weekend with Angeal's help, a very different General with a totally different style, was extremely exciting. Cloud decided to make the attempt to become an ambidextrous fighter, if only to learn from any teacher he might encounter... but especially from Sephiroth.

When they'd arrived at the campsite and began to file off the bus, Cloud still felt a little queasy and a little light headed, but decided he quite liked the effect of Skylar's cookies.

In fact, he was feeling so loose and relaxed that he didn't bother worrying about his hair, which was ridiculously fluffed up and bent from hanging outside the open window for a length of time, and then sleeping on it.

Skylar laughed when Cloud trotted off of the bus looking like he'd been electrocuted. "You are a mess. Did you bring a comb?"

"Hm." Cloud shook his head with a smile. "What's the point? We're supposed to be roughing it."

"It's rough looking at you. Come here." Skylar pulled Cloud closer, and began running his fingers through the yellow mess. Quickly it was tamed into something more becoming, and Skylar took the liberty of framing it prettily around Cloud's face. "Much better."

Once he was free, Cloud run a defiant hand up the back of his head, fluffing up Skylar's work.

Angeal gave the class twenty minutes to set up camp, issuing tents and sleeping bags for those who did not bring their own. Cloud was extremely familiar with how to set up a standard issue cadet tent, and was the first to have his erected.

He then laughed to himself over the word 'erected'.

Cloud threw his one bag into the tent, and then shook out his issued sleeping bag, praying not to find bugs, crusty white stains, or small dead animals. A few leaves came falling out, but despite that it was clean and smelled like detergent mixed with the dark, mysterious, sexy cologne of whomever slept in it last. Cloud inhaled happily before refolding it for later. Sometimes using standard issued shit was nice.

"Time!" Angeal bellowed with no need for a bullhorn. The man was fucking loud when he wanted to be.

There was a small clearing beside the tent area, and it was there that the seminar went through sword warm up drills, and then a series of very brief sparring matches. Angeal broke the little spars up if he found them boring, often switching out students to pin people of similar skill levels together. He and the assistants watched carefully, chatting quietly about each cadet while taking tons of notes.

Cloud would have done nearly anything to get a peek at them.

But contrary to his nosy nature, the rest of the class wasn't even permitted to stand around and watch the matches. Angeal refused to allow them the time to catch their breath - another Junior SOLDIER relentlessly drove them through a brutally paced, never ending series of push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, lunges, crunches, and squats.

Why was it that old school calisthenic exercise was so much worse than more advanced special training? Cloud threw up a second time that evening, and was then forced to do sit-ups in it.

This went on until the sun began to set, and the dark provided the comfort that this torture would soon end. But to the entire seminar's collective woe, one of the assistants kicked on some heavy duty field lights, effectively illuminating the entire camp.

Getting called over to sword spar was like a break. Cloud was summoned several times, and felt that he'd showcased some good work for the General and his cronies. But as the evening was blacked out by night, Cloud was terribly hungry, sore, tired, and cold. His body managed to work without his brain's permission, spurred on by the knowledge that the end had to be near.

"Alright class," Angeal eventually called. "My preliminary evaluations are complete. I have some news for you. Take a seat."

Many boys dropped onto the ground and simply stayed that way. Cloud himself lying on his back like a starfish, but eventually found the will to slink up into something like a sitting position to hear whatever Angeal was about to say.

"You're all very green, but I do see a lot of promise. You've had the benefit of being in a smaller class than previous years, and the extra attention has been good to you. But I don't want to waste my time on certain individuals that aren't anywhere near capable of surviving the SOLDIER exam. I'd rather spend the time and energy on those who I feel are SOLDIER material. So if I call your name I want you to get up and pack up your things, the bus will take you back to Midgar in twenty minutes."

Cloud's heart dropped. What the fuck was this? Midgar's Next Top Model? Was he about to be eliminated? He'd just done about 500 pushups for nothing?

"If I let you go, you're of course welcome to try again at my next seminar if you still want to pursue the SOLDIER exam. Study hard, get more practice and prove me wrong, alright? So the ones going home are... Bristol, Holbech, Lynch, Rutgers, and Strickland. Thank you for coming; enjoy your weekend."

Cloud planted his hands on the ground, looking around in disbelief. He wondered if he'd gone temporarily stupid and missed his name being called. Angeal had said Strickland, right? Did he really mean Strife?

He then realized that Taylor's last name was Lynch. Cloud watched in utter disbelief as the huge boy hung his head in defeat and slowly picked himself up off the wet, freezing grass. How in almighty hell could Angeal send a huge powerhouse guy like that home, and keep a runt like him around?

"There are now fifteen boys in the seminar. I won't be sending anyone else home. You're all in it until the end. We'll be leaving Sunday afternoon, so for the next two days I'm going to push you past any physical limits you've set on yourselves. By now you're used to the cadet schedule, and many of you might have recently hit a plateau. By breaking away from that, you're all going to grow, and be capable of pushing each other further this winter and spring before the exam next summer.

"This weekend has a core lesson plan of sword tactics, maneuver theory, and we're going to touch on limit breaks. Every SOLDIER I know hit a limit break at least once in the Academy; maybe we'll even see one this weekend. So it's not going to be all about raw energy expenditure. Have you guys had enough exercise for one day? You want some dinner?"

The class all perked up a bit, becoming a bit more animated.

Angeal pointed towards an area nearby where the trees became thicker and more dense. "There's a short, two mile trail that starts over there, loops a bit through the forest and spits you out again right where it started. You'll get dinner and the rest of the night to yourselves once everyone has completed the trail. I'd recommend running in a group to get it over with, but I can understand if some of you have to drag your classmates through it."

"Really?" someone cried out.

"Now you can do it twice," Angeal amended with a smile. "Really."

There was a long silence until one of the boys in the class stood up. His name was William, but to Cloud he looked like his name should have been Striker or Diesel or something badass like that. Anyways, this kid found some supernatural wellspring of energy and took off at a sprint, disappearing into the dark forest.

"That's a SOLDIER," Angeal nodded.

The rest of the class was a little slower to drag themselves up, but eventually everyone was running. It was actually a little bit fun and hazardous, muddy and dark and surely full of wild monsters that could pop out at any moment. The thought of it would have terrified him before, but as a more experienced Cadet it was an awfully fun possibility.

It was cruel to exit the dark, freezing trail, to see picnic tables and tents and Angeal and the assistants working to prepare food. But like good cadets, they went right back into the forest to go through the run a second time.

It took them half an hour to complete the task, and were already beaten by hungrier, faster students who were eager to get some food. Once all fifteen emerged from the forest a second time, they were beckoned to sit at the tables. Cloud expected a simple camp stew like at the Northern Crater, or maybe some cruel form of rations that they'd have to fight to the death over. But he was delighted to discover that Angeal had rewarded the class by bringing little personal pizzas to grill over the open fire. There was even a spread of fresh toppings to sprinkle on them.

Cloud took three little pizzas for himself, and loaded them with veggies and bacon. Soon he was happily filling his empty stomach, the irony not lost that he was eating Sephiroth's favorite food without him. There wasn't much conversation at the tables, so when Cloud was finished he excused himself on wobbly, sore legs to retire to his tent.

He wriggled out of his clothes and into some warm fleece pajama pants and a clean hoodie, and then crawled into his sleeping bag. He fully relaxed and was able to feel the devastating effect of a hard training day; every muscle on his body throbbed and ached. He was almost too sore to sleep, and so reached into his bag to eat a few bonbons. His hand bumped his cell phone, but he left it in the bag.

Cloud stared at the creased walls of the tent and ate his feelings.

It'd been probably the longest day of his entire life. It was difficult to comprehend that he'd woken up that morning, went through an entire school day, vomited and napped on the bus to the site, went through an entire evening of hellish torture, and was now expected to get a good night's sleep for at least a month's worth of physically activity.

After finishing his candy, Cloud turned onto his side and blinked in the dark. He wanted to call Sephiroth.

'Seph told me to break you,' Angeal growled in his short term memory, refreshing Cloud's anger and resolve not to communicate with his beloved for the duration of this seminar.

He sighed through his nose and turned onto his other side. It would be so nice to hear Sephiroth's quiet, rumbly, monotonous voice, though. Cloud was comforted by just listening to him speak at length about something, like politics or color schemes or movie directors while he just closed his eyes and drifted away. Sephiroth was never boring, but rather his voice was a calm, smooth body of water that Cloud's drowsing mind could simply float away on.

Cloud was starting to doze at the thought of it when a rustling shot him back into awareness. His eyes went wide and his fingers crept out of his sleeping bag and curled into a fist.

There was rarely any peace to be found when sleeping outside. It could be a monster. It could be a rabid raccoon. It could be a rapist. It could be all of those things mixed into one which would really suck.

To his horror, there was the slow, deliberate sound of his tent zipper rising. Something big shuffled into the small empty space beside his sleeping bag.

"What's up?" Cloud asked clearly, keeping his trepidation out of his voice.

"It's just me," a gravelly voice answered, and a flashlight was switched on to reveal a horrifying face in the dark.

Cloud gasped and clutched his chest, when he realized it was Angeal Hewley, lighting his face from the bottom to look like a fucking grim Halloween pumpkin. "General Hewley! You fucking terrified me!"

"Oh sorry," Angeal said, lowering the flashlight to set on neutrally on the ground beside them.

An awkward silence fluttered in the air between them, until Cloud repeated himself on a much more conversational level. "Uh, what's up?"

"Okay so, I know we've never really talked before, but I just wanted to say hey..." Angeal said to him, sounding much more conversational than the sadistic villain he'd been all evening. "I'm just stopping at everybody's tent to make sure you're all okay. Do you need anything? Bottle of water? A snack? Are you warm enough?"

After a long evening of being his bitch, the last thing Cloud expected was to kindle a friendship with this dude. He could not figure Angeal out at all, and gave him a small shrug, "Uh... I'm fine."

Angeal gave him a hard glare, but it didn't match what was coming out of his mouth at all. "Okay, good. I'm training you boys hard this weekend, but I don't want you to get sick or anything. Just let me know if there's anything you need - I'll probably yell at you and humiliate you for asking, but really, don't be afraid to ask me for anything at all."

"... Huh?" Cloud squinted his eyes, totally confused by everything Angeal had just said.

"Well, I'm off," Angeal told him kindly, still giving him that stony, severe glare. "Cloud... one more thing. You're completely within your right to say no, and this is completely off the record, but I've got a favor to ask you."

"Yeah?..." Cloud squeezing his eyes closed and expecting the very worst possible thing to come out of Angeal's stubbled mouth. Surely he was about to suggest that Cloud gargle a cup full of his hot SOLDIER piss. This 'nice guy visiting tents' thing had to be a totally sadistic, twisted ploy to further torture the class.

"Could you... tell me a little bit about Skylar?"

Both of Cloud's eyes shot open. "Huh?"

"Is he seeing anyone?"

Cloud felt like he was knocked back several feet by the force of that question, and took in a chestful of air before screeching, "You have a crush on - !"

Angeal muffled the rest of his outcry by covering Cloud's mouth with both gloved hands. "Shh! Be cool!"

Cloud nodded rapidly, eyes smiling up at him and he peeled the hands off his mouth and whispered, "You like Skylar?"

"I dunno. I was just wondering what his situation is."

"Get in here and zip up the tent!" Cloud giggled, scooting back to give Angeal's large frame enough room to make himself comfortable. "He's single! He hooks up sometimes but nothing serious at all. I can tell he would be into something longer term, though. He's just waiting for the right person."

"I don't know about all that," Angeal laughed, and it was odd. His mouth didn't really curve into a smile, although he sounded amused and friendly. "I just wanted to make sure he wasn't involved or anything. You think I might be his type?"

"How could you not be?" Cloud told him shyly. "You're... well... hot. If you don't mind me saying so."

Angeal seemed caught off guard, "Oh... thank you."

"You're welcome!"

"So what's he into? What's he like?" Angeal asked, becoming slightly more animated as the awkward tension dispersed.

"This is gonna sound a little weird, but Skylar is super into bicycles," Cloud said apologetically. "Like super into them."

"Bicycles?"

"Yeah, he's really into old school bicycles. He draws them, he looks at pictures of them, he gets dressed up in like vintage 50's clothes and rides them around town, and he has like ten fucking bikes. He goes to those old people markets and looks for super rare, vintage parts for bicycles and trades them online with people. I mean, he's normal though and cool to talk to."

"... Bicycles?" Angeal repeated. "That's so... that's... that's kind of cool, I guess?"

Cloud shrugged. "He's into any kind vintage stuff. Like his iPod has a lot of like old timey music and... It's really strange. But when he dresses up, it's sort of hot. Wanna see a picture?"

Angeal agreed. "Sure."

"Lemme turn my phone on... I'm trying to ignore Seph," Cloud admitted while he quickly pulled out the device.

"Why?"

"Well... having you ride my ass all weekend is sort of shitty." He ignored his inbox which had a slew of unread texts, and went to his photo album to locate pictures of Skylar.

"Riding asses is my job. It's literally my job description," Angeal stated without a drop of irony. "I would be doing it even without Seph asking me to."

Cloud swallowed nervously. "Understood... but he'd not supposed to involve himself in my school stuff at all."

"He's going to be making tough calls on your behalf whether you like it or not. That's what superiors do... especially if they care."

"... Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Cloud asked nervously.

"That's fair, considering you answered mine."

"Well... you sent some guys home earlier. If I weren't dating Seph, would you still have kept me?"

"I didn't do Sephiroth any favors by keeping you here. He would have probably paid me to send you home."

"... He doesn't believe in me, does he? I knew it. I knew it! He wants to keep me in the infantry, doesn't me?"

"He wants you safe," Angeal corrected. "When I said he told me to break you, he meant that I should be totally sure that you're ready for combat. You're fast as hell, you swing hard, and you surprise your opponents by appearing harmless. Do you want to be a SOLDIER?"

"More than anything!" Cloud affirmed desperately, then lowered his volume to keep the declaration private. "... I want to be a SOLDIER more than anything."

"Who cares if anyone else believes in you, then?"

"I guess I do."

"Fuck what anyone else believes. Believing in yourself is everything. Good lord, you young kids have such low self-esteem these days. I blame porn. Do you watch a lot of porn?"

Cloud's eyes went wide.

Angeal's features remained severe. "You can't tell when I'm joking, can you?"

"Not at all."

"Story of my life."

Cloud smiled guiltily, then scooted closer as he found the pictures on his phone that he was looking for. "Anyways, this is Skylar on his personal time."

Skylar had slicked his bleach blonde hair into an old fashioned part, and was wearing a fetching light blue sweater over a tight white t-shirt that contrasted against the yellow undertones of his skin beautifully. With gray slacks and shiny shoes, he appeared to have stepped out of a time machine - a look Cloud had sometimes tried to pull off but never quite succeeded in the effort. If anything Cloud looked like he came from the future, but Skylar's exotic features were perfect to set off a retro weekend wardrobe. Cloud smiled as he showed Angeal a few more pictures, watching the older man's reactions.

"He's so..." Angeal couldn't seem to find the right word.

Cloud couldn't either. Skylar was an odd person, but he was really fucking easy on the eyes. He offered Angeal a word to complete his sentence: "Hot?"

"I've never given a second thought to bicycles. I think I'd like to have a conversation about them, sometime."

Cloud grinned as he put his phone away. "Skylar will talk your face off about bikes if you let him. Want me to like... set something up?"

"No. I'll talk to him myself, sometime... Thanks for the information." Angeal went up to his knees and made for an exit.

"Am I at least allowed to tell him you asked?" Cloud pleaded, shivering a bit as cold air entered while Angeal exited.

"... Sure. That wouldn't hurt," Angeal decided, zipping Cloud's tent up. He then quickly unzipped it to poke his chiseled, handsome face back in. "Let me know if he's not interested. Don't let me ask him out if he's gonna turn me down. I'm extremely sensitive."

"Aha!" Cloud giggled. "I'm starting to be able to tell when you're joking!"

"I'm not joking. I'm extremely sensitive."

"Uh... okay. I'll let you know one way or the other!" Cloud promised with a nervous laugh.

"Cool." Angeal actually smiled then, curved lips and all, and it was a goddamn handsome thing.

"One more question!" Cloud cried.

"What?"

"Can a right-handed swordsman be just as good as a left-handed one?"

"Seph?" Angeal assumed.

Cloud nodded. "He's trying to make me learn left-handed. I don't think I can."

Angeal narrowed his eyes. "Tell Sephiroth that the only thing a left hand can do better than a right one is jerk off."

And then he was gone, and Cloud was left alone to wallow in the happy, cute news of awkward Angeal and his crush. He wanted to share it with Sephiroth...

Instead Cloud turned his cell phone off without reading his texts. If Sephiroth wanted him to train hard, that was what he was going to do. As a direct result of that, he needed sleep and had no time for conversation.

Once this decision was made, Cloud grabbed his phone and turned it back on.

Sephiroth answered before the second ring, "Hey - "

"Shut up. I can't sleep without saying goodnight to you. So goodnight."

"G'night, baby."

Nothing was quite as irritating as Sephiroth's ability to defuse Cloud's rage. "... I love you, Seph. I'm still furious, though!"

"Will ya call me tomorrow?"

"I will..." He paused before making a soft kissing noise against the phone.

He waited until a soft sound echoed from Sephiroth's end, and then Cloud smiled and closed his phone. Once it was done, he was asleep in moments.

Back in Midgar, Sephiroth turned off the infomercials he'd been watching and rolled over with a smile of his own. It was hard for him to sleep without saying goodnight, too.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Trumpets didn't belong anywhere in the musical realm as far as Cloud was concerned, because whenever he heard one it was horrible news. Either it was bullshit ska music, or he was on Angeal's weekend seminar and it was time to wake up.

It was the freezing early morning hours, and he was sore from sleeping on the unforgiving ground. When compared to how he could have woken up that morning - in Sephiroth's warm bed and sore from passionate love making - it made Cloud wail in anguish.

He wriggled into a clean pair of undies and a fresh wife beater, and then shoved his boots on. All the while the trumpet continued to rattle his nerves with a brash, quick beckoning call. Cloud angrily exited his tent with the intent of ramming the fucking wake-up trumpeter's instrument down his fucking throat.

The trumpet played until the entire group of boys groggily met Angeal and his assistants in the small clearing beside the campsite. Once the entire group was present, Angeal stepped forward with a broad smile. "We're going for a morning run, same trail was last night. Earn your breakfast by beating us back here."

The class was not very enthused.

"Earn coffee by beating us back here."

The class became a lot more enthused.

And so Angeal and his comrades took off at a slow jog on the trail. The class was forced to run faster, knowing that if Angeal passed them they suffered humiliation and hunger and no caffeine.

Eventually as the sun broke over the horizon and he was settled into the run, Cloud slowed down a bit to run alongside Skylar and panted a greeting. "Morning!"

"Hmf," Skylar replied. He was sporting bloodshot eyes, a cold sweat and a runny nose, and his bleached hair was flopping against his forehead. It was cute that General Hewley was developing a crush on him when he looked his absolute worst.

Cloud galloped happily alongside his train wreck friend, "I know a secret!"

"Hmf?"

"It's about you!" Cloud rasped, leaping a little to avoid a wet cluster of leaves that might have been the remains of a dead animal. "Someone has a crush on you!"

"Who?" Skylar managed to articulate.

"It's someone here on this seminar!" Cloud told him.

"Who? Hng!" Skylar heaved a little and spat at the ground, but didn't slow his legs. Cadets were well accustomed to vomiting on the go.

"I'll give you clues until you figure it out!" Cloud declared, happy for something to take their minds off of their mutual misery. Games like this had gotten each other through a year's worth of mornings in Nurse Rhonda's Run class, and this was no different.

Through clever clues, Cloud revealed that Skylar's secret admirer had dark hair, blue eyes, probably had a big cock, and was capable of growing facial hair. Skylar guessed every single boy in attendance, even those who didn't come close to fitting the description.

He was out of people to guess, so he threw out a wild suggestion. "Oh I dunno, then. Angeal?"

"Ding ding!" Cloud cheered.

Skylar didn't say anything more. After a few minutes of running in a highly anticipatory silence, they were back at the camp site where a few picnic benches were covered in breakfast items and coffee carafes.

The students waited for Angeal to return, and were mildly relieved to find that everyone had beaten him and nobody would be going hungry. Once they had the okay to eat, Cloud stormed the breakfast lineup and grabbed what he wanted. He snatched a styrofoam bowl, a few small cereal boxes and a carton of milk. He also helped himself to a red solo cup full of coffee, and plopped down in the wet, cold grass to enjoy.

Skylar eventually sat down near him, chewing his way through a pyramid of sugary doughnuts.

Cloud felt a little awkward, so extended his foot to tap the toe of Skylar's boot. "Hey. Did you hear me?"

"Hm?" he asked, licking powdered sugar off the side of his mouth.

"Ya know," Cloud said, taking a sip of coffee.

"What?"

Cloud mouthed, "Angeal."

"... Yeah?"

Cloud traced a heart in the air with both index fingers.

Skylar raised an eyebrow. "... What's your goal?"

"With what?"

"Are you making fun of me? It's not cool."

"No!" Cloud cried out, grabbing his plastic cup of coffee and scooting closer. He then lowered his voice to a whisper. "He came into my tent last night to talk to me about you."

"Let's pretend that you're telling the truth. Why would he ask you about me?"

"I don't know him well, but I think he's secretly a big, sensitive teddy bear," Cloud suggested, peering over at Angeal through the corner of his eyes, who was shirtless and stoic as a hawk. The man was eating beef jerky for breakfast and sipping from a flask. "Um... well anyways, he just wanted to know if you were seeing anyone, and if he might be your type."

"... And what did you tell him?" Skylar asked.

"I told him he definitely was!" Cloud grinned.

"... What would lead you to believe that?"

Cloud stared at Skylar for a moment, then made a wild gesture towards the hunky General. "Are you fucking kidding? You wouldn't be into that?"

Skylar took an agitated bite of another doughnut. He seemed to have a lot to say, but swallowed his words along with his sugary confection.

Cloud was in disbelief. "Wh... What? Why not?"

"He's not my type at all. Like, at all."

"Are you insane?" Cloud gawked.

"My type is a slim, smooth, pretty... blonde haired, blue-eyed twink. That's my type," Skylar stared at Cloud. "I think you know that."

"Oh," Cloud blurted, then took a long drink of his coffee to avoid replying to that particular comment. Instead he continued on happily in an effort to talk about Angeal. "Well, Angeal has the blue eyed part! And who knows, he might have been a twink in the past and have a little of that bitchy spirit! And have you ever considered going for an older man? It might be really awesome!"

Skylar aggressively ate for a few moments, before he let loose a low volume tirade. "You know, if I wanted to get with a SOLDIER, I could do it without your help. You don't have to throw me your boyfriend's ugly friend as a consolation."

"C'mon, Skylar! I don't feel the need to throw you anything... you are a really great guy. Furthermore, Angeal is far from ugly! He's like ten times hotter than anyone you've bragged about being with... but this isn't me trying to hook you up with anyone. He expressed an interest, and I'm letting you know. I'll tell him it won't work out, and that'll be the end of it... although I just don't know why you wouldn't even consider talking to the guy - "

"And you don't see how this is kind of insulting?"

"... I never asked you to like me," Cloud said, finally addressing the tension that had been building in their friendship since the first day of school.

"Don't act innocent, like you weren't stringing me along and playing with me all this fucking time. You have done everything in your power to..." Skylar trailed off and shook his head angrily, still not looking up from his plate.

"What did I do that was so wrong? Talk to you? Go to the gym with you? Sit by you in classes?"

"Everything you do is wrong! Your smile, your clothes, your hair, your smell, and especially your stupid accent. You always have to be the center of attention no matter what... you always have to be so..." Skylar looked up, his eyes stormy and his yellow complexion burnt into a smoldering red blush. "You're perfect, and it's not fair."

"... I never knew you felt that way. I mean... I guessed maybe you liked me a little. I thought it kind of went away, and we became good friends."

"... You really didn't know that I'm basically in love with you?"

Cloud was helpless, truly ignorant as to how to handle such a situation. Nobody had ever liked him before in his entire life, especially not with such an intense melancholy. He'd never had to really consider anyone else's feelings about him, and thought back to all the times he'd touched, or hugged, or flirted with Skylar. He supposed in Skylar's eyes, he really was the biggest tease in the world.

A massive guilt settled onto Cloud. "... I dunno what to say."

Skylar figured that he'd said enough to sever their friendship entirely, so he might as well get everything he'd been stewing over for the past year off his chest. "Say you finally see that there's no future with Sephiroth, that he's a fucking megalomaniac, and that he's not even that hot. Say that you know it's gonna end badly anyways, so you want to quit wasting time and give this... thing between us a chance."

"... None of that is true." Cloud swallowed hard, his throat tight and sore. "You don't know him. And I'm not sure if you even know me."

"I do know you. I'm with you most of the time, Cloud. I'm with you every single day... then whenever he's in town you disappear on weekends and act like that's love. That isn't love! That's... sex. That's Sephiroth killing his down time. That's not a real relationship."

Cloud always thought that if this conversation ever arose so bluntly, he'd have all the right words to say to justify what he and Sephiroth had. From an outside perspective it must have looked strange, even a bit sad that Cloud waited, longed, and thirsted for any opportunity to be with Sephiroth. The General was less vocal about it, but their love never felt one-sided... Cloud knew Sephiroth relished their time together, too. Not simply for sex, but because they gave one another something intangible and addicting.

His friendship with Skylar was important to Cloud. He cared about him, and searched for the right way to remedy this situation. "I never intended to string you along, or tease you, or do anything but be your friend. You've got a really twisted opinion about me and Sephiroth, but you can think what you want. What's going on with me and Sephiroth is totally beside the point of you and me, and our friendship. I'm happy with dating Sephiroth, and I'm happy being your friend."

"It's so sad that you think that's the best you deserve."

Cloud gave a little cry of frustration. "I have no idea what that means. What's Sephiroth supposed to do that he's not doing?"

"If I was him... I'd yank you out of this army and take care of you. You don't belong here."

"... What?"

"Admit it, Cloud..." Skylar gave him raised eyebrow. "You only joined so you could meet Sephiroth and get a trophy fuck from him. You got it. And you only want to be in SOLDIER to continue to try and get it. So what's going to happen when he's tired of it? You're going to be stuck in infantry."

A white hot anger blinding away any desire to patch up their friendship, as no friend he wanted to keep would think that he didn't belong in SOLDIER. He rose up to his feet, collecting his breakfast bowl. "I'm guessing if things did go bad between me and Seph, you'd completely lose interest... You don't want me. You just want me to be as miserable as you are."

Cloud threw away his dishes and made his way to the clearing where a few of the students were already starting to warm up. He walked right up to William, "Hey."

William had never spoken to Cloud before, because he found the short kid to be very loud and obnoxious. A loner by nature, William was not interested in loud, obnoxious people, and was caught off guard by the abrupt greeting. "... What?"

"Are you straight?"

"Very."

"Perfect! Wanna be friends?"

"No."

"That's fine, but can I train next to you this weekend?" Cloud asked, already starting to stretch alongside him.

"Why?"

"I like your style, and I kind of had a fight with my - "

"Actually never mind, I don't care why. But sure. I like your style, too. Just don't talk to me at all."

"Deal." Cloud locked his mouth with an imaginary key and tossed it away.

He didn't want to talk to anyone. He wanted to focus on sword training and forget anything else that had happened in the past few hours. Sephiroth's concern for him was not important, Angeal's crush was not important, Skylar's stupid feelings were not important. The only important thing to Cloud was beating some ass.

William had the right idea by being a loner. That was how you became a SOLDIER.

Hard training stretched Cloud's Saturday into an eternity. It snowed heavily that night, but warmed up by early Sunday afternoon.

They were going through the achy, exhausted motions of a final sparring lesson. The bus was loaded, and the class was more than ready to leave. But one more final evaluation was necessary to gauge improvement potential.

As promised, Cloud hadn't said a word to William all weekend. He simply fought him, meeting the bigger boy at every turn and pushing him back in his low-angle, heavy ax-swinging style of fighting.

Cloud dug his sword into William's side, hacking out a chuck of flesh. The instructors were ready with a Cure, and had healed the wound almost before it even bled. But it still happened, it still counted, it still added up in some invisible tally that existed inside each warrior on the planet since the day they were born.

That particular wound was the one that pushed William over his limit.

He came at Cloud with a fiercer swing than he'd ever encountered in his life. Cloud thought he heard a crack of lightning, but would later find out that it was both of his wrists snapping under the pressure of William's limit break.

A curious thing then happened. William's limit break broke dozens of bones in Cloud's hands, and that raw damage encouraged a limit break of Cloud's very own.

It felt better than an orgasm, like his entire body came alive from somewhere deep inside, and it was well rested, energetic and exhilarated to fight. He didn't even realize he'd broken bones. He didn't have the time to think that far, all he could do was react.

It was only about five seconds that both boys were over the limit, but it felt like hours.

Cloud did what he could to defend himself, but his hands eventually quit listening to the signals from his brain. His fingers went loose and his sword slid from his grip, and Cloud felt several hot, heavy sears of pain across his chest and arms. It scorched like a severe sunburn from the inside out.

William's limit died off abruptly. His pure rage extinguished to reveal a cherubic calm, and he slipped unconscious down into the snow.

Cloud was still standing while the narcotic rush of energy bled away. A pain that he couldn't even process replaced the euphoric high, and he turned his eyes to Angeal. In the roar of his confused thoughts, he wondered if he'd done a good job in the spar.

Instead of praise or criticism, Angeal and his assistants were looking at him in pure horror. Cloud looked down at himself, and was surprised to find that his white wife beater was now red.

"I'm okay," he said, before collapsing straight down like a demolished building.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Aerith quickly finished her cigarette, taking one last long drag before she flicked it out onto the sidewalk. Still exhaling smoke, she went back into the church.

She promised Zack that she'd quit smoking for the baby, but she knew it wasn't going to do anything to her child. Cigarettes had no adverse effect on her body.

She jiggled her shirt anyways in an effort to shake the smell out. She threw her long braid over her shoulder and began to make her way to her garden when a tiny knock echoed slightly from the door.

Nobody she knew would knock, so she picked up her staff from the last pew and hesitantly approached. There wasn't a single crack head in the slums that she was afraid of, but there were a lot of people in the world capable of doing her serious harm.

It was her habit to be careful, so she raised her defenses and called out, "Yes?"

Instead of a verbal response, there was another tiny knock.

She closed her eyes and concentrated a good amount of energy into her staff, effectively charging her fazer to 'stun'. She then opened the door a tiny bit to peer out.

There was a little boy standing there looking up at her. A silence extended between them until Aerith finally spoke, "Hi... are you selling something?"

The little boy visibly struggled for words. "... Aerith, this is awkward for me... but I really need your help."

"Do I know you?" She asked, taking a good look at the odd looking little creature.

"Do I look like anyone you might know?" He asked cryptically.

She opened the door a little more and crouched down to be on the little boy's level. He was a platinum blonde with bright green eyes, who seemed to be dressed in Victoria's Secret workout gear. "Who are you?"

He leveled her a flat, dubious glare. "Seriously? Think hard."

"You have a big attitude for such a little boy, don't you?" She giggled a little bit at that and reached out to stroke his soft, chubby cheek. She had two reasons for doing this : a touch might give her some insight to his spirit, and he was an utterly adorable little boy.

He indignantly backed away from her hand, "... I look like someone you know. I look exactly like someone you fuckin' know." He then made a rolling gesture, as she obviously wasn't getting it. "Maybe not someone you like, but someone you know. Who has the displeasure of knowin' you. He works with Zack... you hate his guts..."

She perched her chin on her knuckles, trying to decipher the odd static feeling she got when she'd touched him. The only other person who made her feel that way was, "Sephiroth?"

"Aha, you see a resemblance! After all, he's my..." the little boy's eyes widened, and he shouted dramatically, "My father!"

"Fiddlesticks," she told him doubtfully. "No woman in her right mind would reproduce with that giant, creepy douche."

The little boy paused for a lengthy moment, grinding his teeth and glaring at her. Then he continued, "... I'm not from this current timeline. I'm from the future."

She giggled, and it ended on an abrupt fit of coughing. "What?"

"Yeah, in my timeline Sephiroth bangs chicks all the time! And they're totally into it!" the little boy declared proudly, making a tiny thrusting motion. "That's not important though - listen to me, Aerith! You cannot tell anyone that I'm here, or else... Or else Midgar will get nuked by a robot army from Wutai and Zack will die, and more importantly, your baby will die. See, your baby's gotta survive, he's the only hope for mankind against Sephiroth!"

She was grinning. "Wow, really?"

"Yeah, Sephiroth is evil - he's from the future, just like me! He's friends with Zack and always tries to get him to break up with you because he knows your baby is the Earth's only hope! He's planning to destroy the baby! I followed him back in time, where Zack is still young and vulnerable, and is preying on his weakness..." The little boy then gazed meaningfully up into Aerith's eyes. "... That's where you come in. You gotta let me stay with you, keep me safe and order me pizzas while I make my plans to defeat Sephiroth. Help me ensure that Zack will remain safe to fulfill is destiny as the father of your mighty warrior son."

She was lighting a cigarette, only half listening. "I don't believe you."

"Y... you don't?" The little boy's shoulders fell. "You haven't seen Terminator, have you?"

"Of course not," she exhaled. "But I know you're full of beans because my baby's a girl. And there's a lot about me that you apparently don't know."

"Like what?" he whined, irritated by the fact that he was going to have to kill Aerith instead of earn her support against his crusade against his bigger counterpart.

"A whole lot," She flicked some ash off her cigarette. "Do you - or Sephiroth for that matter - know what a Cetra is?"

"A... kind of gum?" he guessed.

She grinned, glad for a little confirmation that the Jenovians had no idea what she was - which was always in the back of her mind when she was around him. She always supposed that might have been the reason Sephiroth never liked her - but now she knew it was only because he had a giant crush on Zack and was simply a big jerk face. "Sweetie pie, nobody travels through time on this planet without me knowing about it. And nobody is born on this planet without me knowing about it, either. Which makes you a very special little boy... you didn't come from the Lifestream, and you're not from the future. Where'd you come from?"

Sephiroth's body language told her that he was about to attack or run, so Aerith touched him with her staff before he had the chance to do either.

The little boy was gently tazed. "Ouch!"

"Answer me."

"Umm... nowhere... never mind..." He began to back away, slowly realizing that he came to the wrong fucking place.

"Come back here," she ordered, tapping the stoop of her church with her staff. "I can catch you if you run, trust me."

He reluctantly obeyed, but said nothing. He stood there nervously staring at his stolen shoes, wiggling the ends of them against the cement.

"Tell me the truth," she invited in a kinder tone. "Where are you from?"

He let out a sigh. "... Awright, I'm not from the future, and Sephiroth's not my dad. I'm... a clone of him. I woke up at the Northern Crater a couple days ago. I know everything Sephiroth knows up until... maybe a week or two ago. I thought I was him... I kind of am. But better."

"Come closer," she said, reaching out. He seemed reluctant but did, and let her stroke his cheek again. After a moment, she asked him a strange question, "... What's your name?"

"Sephiroth!" he said automatically, and then shook his hands. "No, no! Not like... well, I'm better! I'm different... but I'm... just... that's still my name. I think."

"You've killed a lot of people."

"I had to. I had to get inside from the Crater... I had to get on an airship... I couldn't let anyone see me."

"Why'd you come here?" she asked, pulling her hand away and rubbing her hands together with a shudder.

He planted his feet apart, putting his hands on his hips and looking down at her over the bridge of his tiny button nose. "I'm gonna kill Sephiroth. I dunno how yet, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to start but here."

She giggled at the little boy's very grown up resolve. "Why here, though?"

"I thought you were dumb enough to buy my story," he admitted. "And I know you hate Sephiroth more than anyone... You'd wanna see him dead, wouldn't cha?"

She took another puff of her cigarette, "A lot more people hate Sephiroth than you can imagine."

He huffed, angrily glaring down at the cracked cement. "... Why? He's... I'm the good guy."

"If you're a clone of Sephiroth, you know that's not entirely true."

His eyes were narrow, clouded with fatigue, confusion, and Sephiroth's very specific brand of stubbornness. "Then help me kill him."

She met his neon green stare with concern. "You're just a little boy... Why do you want to kill anyone...?"

"I can't go to the lab," he blurted in a quick breath before sucking in his bottom lip. It was shaking between his teeth. "If Sephiroth finds out about me, he'll either kill me or put me in the lab. And I can't go there."

"The lab," she repeated softly. "The one in the Shin-Ra building?"

"I won't - " He paused on a hiccup as a fat tear slipped down his cheek. "I won't go there, never."

"Why don't you come in and sit with me for a while? Tell me about Sephiroth and the lab," she invited, straightening up and gently touching the back of his head to guide him inside.

"I don't wanna talk about the lab."

She changed the subject. "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah..." He nodded, but was hesitant to follow.

"Do you like peanut butter and jelly?"

"Yeah."

He still didn't seem entirely willing to enter the church, so Aerith crouched down again to look up at him. "Sephiroth, come inside and have some lunch with me. Tell me about how you got here from the Crater."

The little clone wiped the tears off his cheeks and stood up straight, then proudly marched past the threshold of the church as if he owned the place. "I want more jelly on my sandwiches than peanut butter. Strawberry jelly if you got it."

"Is there any other kind?" She smiled and closed the door, and led him down the aisle of the run down church towards the renovated back area that she inhabited. "Maybe after we eat and talk some more, we can take a nap?"

"I don't wanna take a nap!"

But after eating two big jelly sandwiches with a tiny bit of peanut butter, he was drooling on the arm of her couch and peacefully snoozing away.

It gave Aerith a chance to call Tseng.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud came to awareness with the gentle sounds of The Clash buzzing away in his ears. He listened, waiting for the particular moment that Joe Strummer delivered his favorite line in 'Brand New Cadillac'.

"Jesus Christ! Where'd ya get that Cadillaaac?" he always asked. Cloud always wanted to know where the bitch got the fucking car, too. And who would ditch Joe Strummer's cheek bones like that, anyways? He was one of the coolest mother fuckers that ever lived.

Cloud opened his eyes and made the discovery that he was in an infirmary room in what could only be the medical lab. No other place on Earth stank like that joint, and he knew the standard room layout well from when he'd staked out during Sephiroth's coma.

But now instead of being the stalker boyfriend, he was in bed. He moved a little, and immediately regretted that decision.

"Oww," Cloud groaned, piecing together what had happened. If he was waking up by natural means and not by an alarm, it meant he was late for something. "... What time is it?"

The question fell upon deaf ears, as Cloud was all alone. His phone was nowhere to be seen, which also added to his anxiety. He glanced around as he pulled out his earphones, before relaxing back with a moan that meandered across several octaves before settling on a high pitch whine.

He looked down at himself, and found that he was wearing a loose, black cotton t-shirt. He peeked underneath the covers and saw a baggy pair of sweatpants. If he'd woken up in different clothes it meant someone at the lab had seen him naked.

But that wasn't the worst of his current situation. With a harsh swallow of dread, he experimentally rotated his wrists.

They were sore, but had obviously been Cured. He didn't feel so seriously injured...

Why was he in the lab?

What if the scientists had kidnapped him? According to Sephiroth's horror stories, the medical lab loved performing horrible scientific experiments on a ripe teenage body. None was riper, or would be less missed than the short, skinny, rare native Nibelheim carcass of Cloud Strife.

What did they want to do?

What if they strapped him naked to a table and let rats and cockroaches crawl around on him? What if they cut him apart and sewed him back together with some fucked up goat-man calibration? What if they forced him to participate in some strange alien sex ritual with Sephiroth?

No... Any terrifying act the medical lab could conjure would be far less enjoyable that any of that.

First they'd take samples of everything - from snipping off his taste buds to scraping off tiny chunks of his bowel lining with metal hooks. Eyeballs would be scooping out of their sockets, fingernail beds would be ripped away, and every hair would be plucked from every part of his body. Then, whatever was left of him would have to fend for itself in the dark underbelly of the Shin-Ra medical lab.

Then, and only then would he fall victim to alien sex rituals, and definitely not with Sephiroth.

"Help!" Cloud cried out, jabbing the emergency call button several times, "Please! Somebody! Sephiroth! Help!"

It was Nurse Rhonda who swung open the door. "Cloud, what's wrong?"

"Rhonda, thank God!" He shouted, already in tears. "Get me out of here!"

"Calm down. Shh. It's okay," she said in what was meant to be a soothing manner. But since she didn't have a soothing bone in her body, it came out as a blatant order. "Shh. Shut the hell up."

"Get me out of here!" Cloud repeated, a lost and mournful expression on his face. "I'm late for school!"

"You're alright. It's Sunday night."

"Oh god, I missed part of Angeal's seminar!" Cloud's eyes streamed tears of frustration as he began to babble hysterically.

"It's alright! The seminar was over! Stop freaking out!" Rhonda patted the top of his head a few times before she covered his mouth.

"Mmph!" He whined until she let him speak again. " - let me go!"

"You lost a ton of blood, Cloud! You received a fucking transfusion!"

"Oh, gross!" Cloud cried before his throat went dry. "... Did I almost die?"

"Come on now, it wasn't that severe. You would have lost your fucking nipple though if it had been any - "

Cloud's eyes doubled in size, "What?"

"The laceration on your chest wasn't deep enough to pierce anything vital, but - "

"What happened to me?"

"Stop interrupting me and I'll fucking remind you. You and another Cadet lost your limit break virginities together, and your skinny little wrists snapped under the pressure. Then you dropped your sword on yourself, lost a little blood and passed out."

Cloud moaned morbidly, but then his eyes brightened as he gave her a mischievous smile. "... Do I have a badass chest scar, now?"

"No."

Cloud immediately pulled his collar away from his neck to peer down at himself. To his utter disappointment, his chest had been freshly Cured and appeared hairless, bony and normal. At least with a scar it would have looked a little more rugged.

"Why the fuck weren't you wearing wrist guards?" Rhonda interrogated.

"They're optional."

"Not for you!" Rhonda cried. "I have dildos thicker than your wrists!"

"Yeah, me too..." Cloud fell back against the bed with a sigh. "So how long do I have to stay here?"

"You can leave in a little bit. We're just keeping you around until the doctors can take one more look at you while you're awake. You're really just here to sleep off the meds."

Out of nowhere, Cloud began to sob.

Rhonda crossed her arms, unsure of what to say to this seemingly grown, crying man. Cloud was the worst kind of patient, and she would have loved nothing more than to give him exactly what he wanted : one more half-hearted Cure and maybe a shower of Mako before throwing his skinny ass out of her medical wing.

But in an effort to be comforting, Rhonda reached out and patted his shoulder. "... There there?"

"Sephiroth was fucking right!" Cloud bawled. "I'm not fit to be a SOLDIER! General Hewley is gonna tell Coach Dunn to flunk me! They were all so right!"

"What are you talking about?" she asked with a sputtering laugh. "Angeal said you were amaz - "

"And - and!" Cloud couldn't hear her and was now in the midst of a nervous breakdown. "And Coach Dunn said at the start of the week that if we did badly at this seminar, he could fail us if he wants to!"

"Sword training classes are dangerous enough without blowing a limit break wad for the first time," Rhonda said. "It wasn't anybody's fault that you stumbled."

"Stumbled? General Hewley told you I stumbled? Oh great! Now he thinks I'm clumsy and stupid!" Cloud sniveled until he could regain control enough to speak. "... I might as well just fucking drop out. You'd tell me if I had no chance, right?"

She took a seat on the edge of his bed, draping an arm around him. "You're really stressed out about SOLDIER, aren't you?"

"... Honestly?" Cloud blew out a breath, pulling up the collar of his shirt to wipe his face. "... I'm losing my mind over it."

"You want some drugs?" she offered, already making her way to the medicine cabinet.

"Please just kill me!" Cloud begged.

"Everyone gets hurt at some point during their training," Rhonda said to him, preparing a cocktail of a decent painkiller and a very mild sedative. "Guys who don't get hurt during the learning process aren't trying hard enough. You're not going to be flunked for being hurt, and if Jake or Angeal or even Sephiroth told you that, they're full of shit. It was probably tough talk to make sure you were extra careful. Not that it helped."

That made sense to Cloud, and he took a deep, shuddering breath as he accepted the pills and immediately threw them into his mouth. With a few more sips of water he was beginning to feel a little more rational. "... So will I miss any class time? Do you think I'll be okay to go to school tomorrow?"

"I don't see why not." She gave him a smile. "But you have it off, remember? Tuesday you'll be back to 100 percent. Promise."

"... Okay." He smiled back. "Thanks."

"For the next couple weeks you might wanna avoid... repetitive wrist motion."

Cloud's cheeks flooded with color. "Gotcha."

"And no heavy lifting for at least a week."

"I can't afford to miss any sword training, though!" Cloud turned huge, worried, wet eyes to her.

"Use one of the foam ones."

"But what about weight lifting? I need to pump as much iron as possible!"

Rhonda stared down at him, unable to resist thinking that his bravado was a little bit cute... but mostly just obnoxious. "Your body needs a little time, Cloud. A Cure does not replace biological healing, even SOLDIERs need recuperation time. You wanna run your body into the ground and be out of commission before you're even a SOLDIER?"

"I'll never be a SOLDIER..." Cloud gave her a thin lipped smile that didn't reach his freshly watery eyes.

"Jesus Christ. You are out of your mind."

"I wish I'd have died! Just fucking kill me!" Cloud swooned against the pillow with the withering drama of a daytime soap opera starlet.

"Gladly. How would you like to go?"

Cloud's eyes fluttered as he accepted his fate. "Make it look like an accident."

"Would you like a present from Sephiroth before I smother you to death?"

Cloud's eyes shot open, but he tried his best to remain sullen. "... What was his reaction to all of this?"

"He is so proud of you."

"Really?" Cloud smiled.

Rhonda ignored the question and handed him his school bag, which was now filled with clothes, magazines, and the chargers for this Mp3 player and phone.

Cloud gave a small smile as he pulled out a package of Oreos, and felt his heart skip a beat at the small, but intimate gesture. "Where is he?"

"He's working upstairs. He sat with you for a while, but it's hard for him to avoid work if the President knows he's in the building."

Cloud quickly became consumed with his phone, and found that his friends and classmates had filled his text box with wishes for a speedy recovery. Even people from his sword training class that he didn't know that well had gotten his number to tell him to get well soon. He spent time responding to each one, and munching his way through Oreo sleeves.

And then he found a school faculty email from General Hewley.

With a shudder of dread, Cloud read it so quickly that he missed most of the information. Once he'd gotten to the end he was confused, so he forced himself to calm down and then re-read it in its entirety :

'Cadet Strife;

I hope you're mending well; your Coach and classmates look forward to your return on Tuesday.

You're good. I'm taking it upon myself to change your class schedule. Instead of 'Intro to Infantry', you will spend that time in Coach Dunn's advanced sword training class. It's made up of Third Year Junior SOLDIERs, from whom I'm sure you will learn a great deal.

I feel responsible for your injury. You should have been wearing wrist bracers, and your sword training coach will issue you a set. I think it'll help you step up your game even more, and I look forward to seeing the results.

Since you didn't technically complete this seminar, I can't give you full credit. You can make up the remainder by assisting me at my next seminar.

Get well soon.

General Angeal Hewley'

Cloud made a long reply mostly consisting of groveling, endless appreciation, and the guarantee that he was going to be the best seminar assistant that the Shin-Ra army had ever seen. It wasn't enough to say that Cloud was relieved by the reassuring email from Angeal... he wanted to sit on that man's face.

And speaking of sitting on people's faces, Cloud noticed that there were no texts at all from Sephiroth. It made sense considering the man had actually been there to see him and had left a gift, but Cloud was always nervous when he couldn't guess what Sephiroth was thinking.

Cloud decided to find out, and texted him : 'Hey Seph, just wanted to say I'm fine and I got your presents. Thank you! I love you 3'

It was only a few minutes before Sephiroth texted him back, 'How do u feel?'

'Shitty! When can you come kiss me?' Cloud texted Sephiroth nervously. He wanted to see his beloved more than anything, but he wouldn't have held a single thing against that man for not camping out at the stupid medical lab on a day off. Being in this part of Shin-Ra HQ was the last place Sephiroth ever wanted to be.

Sephiroth texted back immediately, 'I got a few things to finish. I'll b down in a couple hours 3 I love u'.

His mother had texted him approximately a thousand aggressive get-well messages, along the lines of 'you'd better call me the minute you wake up you little shitface'. And so Cloud did, and then enjoyed a frantic phone conversation in which she declared that she was already on her way to Midgar to take care of her precious child.

So besides the impending doom of his mother's visit, it was the most relaxing Sunday evening on record. Cloud realized that it had been quite some time since he'd done nothing for a bit. His weekend time was taken by studies, extra training with his friends or spending precious time with Sephiroth.

Despite his dreams of being SOLDIER, most of his life had been spent sprawled on his back in his room hiding from the world, reading magazines, daydreaming and touching himself. With his mouth full of Oreos and Vice magazine at reading distance, Cloud felt like he was in his natural state.

Slowly the magazine drifted down to Cloud's chest, and his eyelids held onto a blink a little too long. He was snoozing peacefully when his first visitor came into the room.

Upon the sight of her son in a hospital bed, April Strife was immediately stricken with a mother's very specific type of tunnel vision. Cloud appeared to be five-years-old, without a shred of manhood and completely vulnerable.

"My poor baby!"

Cloud awoke with such a start that he tensed his injured body in all the wrong places. It felt like fire under his skin, but was so happy for some company that it didn't even really register, "Momma!"

She came forward and scooped him into a very tight, but very careful embrace, "Don't do this to me, you have to be more careful!"

"I'm alright," he pouted bravely, squeezing her back with his good arm. It was so fucking nice to be hugged. That sort of thing was in short supply in his everyday life, but after such an event an awkward pat from Rhonda wasn't the sort of physical contact Cloud needed.

April prolonged the hug until Cloud finally let go of her, and then she kissed both of his cheeks. "Do you need anything? Are you hungry? Have you had dinner yet?"

"Sephiroth's coming by soon; I'll eat with him. Maybe just something to drink for now?" he asked pitifully.

His mother fetched some soda and a Twix from the machines in the lab's break room, and then went about fluffing his pillows, adjusting the room temperature, checking out every wire that was connected to him, and listening to the heroic tale of his life threatening LIMIT BREAK.

"So there I was! Fighting with the giant kid called William! He looks a little like Blade, that vampire movie guy - anyways. It was snowing really hard and there was all this lightning - when it happened! Our swords met, and I looked him right in the eyes... and then we both limit broke! I felt like the Incredible Hulk, I'm pretty sure I got a little taller, too. We clashed again, and then I got totally fucked up. I heard a loud snap and I thought it was another crash of lighting... but it was my wrists! They were totally broken, some bone was even sticking out! I dropped my sword and didn't even realize I'd cut myself wide open. Then he dropped his sword and passed out because I was just that badass. But I was all, 'No Sir, it's alright, I'm okay. I'll walk myself to the bus.' And so I did."

"So you both got over zealous, you broke your wrists and then dropped your sword on yourself?" she clarified with her uncanny ability to hear an actual event through the flimsy veil of bullshit he was constantly spinning.

"Well... that's a less cool way to say it."

"And then you got up and walked your happy ass to the bus?" she reaffirmed doubtfully.

"No. I think General Hewley must have carried me," Cloud admitted, getting a chill at the thought of it. How unfair was it to be pressed all against Angeal's body and be too unconscious to even enjoy it. He probably went home with Cloud's blood all dried up in his chest hair and had to take a really sudsy, soapy shower.

"What are you grinning about?" his mother asked, jerking him out of his impromptu daydream.

"Nothing!" Cloud lied, biting the inside of his mouth.

Cloud eventually became restless, so he spent his energy getting cute for Sephiroth. Halfway through his shower, all the rinsing and washing made the soreness of his wrists pronounce its presence loudly. He got a little worried and cut his bathing routine short, then attempted to dry himself off without using his wrists too much... which made him look and feel like some sort of dysfunctional robot.

Getting dressed was a whole different kind of challenge, since yanking on jeans was sometimes a pretty violent ordeal. Especially lately, since his crusade to gain mass seemed to go straight to his ass and thighs. Once he shimmied into some underwear, he plucked up the courage to ask his mother for help with his jeans.

"How can you be comfortable in these?" she muttered, holding the cigarette between her lips while hiking them up his legs.

"It's like how grandma is with heels. She's all off balance when she's in sneakers - I'm all weirded out in loose jeans," Cloud said, hopping a little to help her out.

"You're not used to the circulation," she commented, standing to yank them up over his round little butt. Then she didn't even hesitate to shove the fleshy bulge in his underwear into his pants to quickly secure the zipper and button.

"Mo-om!" Cloud screamed in horror as he crossed his hands over his crotch. "Bad touch! Stranger danger!"

She was unimpressed as she looked through the bag Sephiroth had packed to select a shirt. "Do you know how much of my life I've spent dealing with your little wee-wee?"

"It's not little anymore..." Cloud grumbled, shimmying around in discomfort. "... And you put it on the wrong side."

She ignored this information, pulling out a plain looking pullover. "You wanna wear something big? It'll be easier for you."

Cloud wrinkled his nose, but agreed. "I guess so."

"Is this even yours? It's huge... there's no size, the tag just says Hydrogen."

Cloud's eyes then lit up when he realized it was super expensive and belonged to Sephiroth. "Put it on me!"

"Alright, alright." April took a quick drag off a cigarette, and then put it out as she looked him up and down. She then experienced a sudden attack of girlish laughter.

"What? What are you laughing at?" Cloud asked, feeling very self-conscious.

"Nothing."

"What?" he begged.

"... You have your dad's nipples."

"That's inappropriate!" Cloud screamed, crossing his arms over his chest like an exposed girl.

"You do... You're built way better than he ever was, though. You're like a little man."

Cloud blushed bright pink, "Shut up!"

"Flex for me, show me your manly muscles."

"No!" He shrank down a little in on himself bashfully.

"I wanna see, it's cute!" she insisted. "Turn around, too."

Cloud hesitantly showed off his fully developed chest and stomach, which he was pretty proud of. His back was also becoming pretty cut, although he didn't care much about it because he couldn't really see it or anything... he'd heard good reviews lately from Sephiroth, though. He also let her feel his hard, shapely arms. "I'm still working on getting bigger, but I like my tone. I just wish I would grow! I want just one more growth spurt so badly!"

"I think those years are behind you." April easily pulled Cloud's arms through the long, loose sleeves of Sephiroth's pullover.

He relaxed onto the bed. After he'd had a moment to think, he then found the nerve to inquire. "... Does anything else of mine look like my dad's?"

"You've got his hair texture, that's for sure." She smiled, running her fingers through it and fluffing it straight up. "Otherwise, not so much. You take after your grandpa - remember those pictures from when he was a kid and working on the mountain highway? That could literally be you."

"Yeah, I know..." He patted his hair back down, slightly disappointed because that wasn't really the information he was looking for. All the Strifes looked like blonde -haired, blue-eyed Children of the Damned, and so Cloud was more interested in his father's input into his genetics. "How tall is my dad?"

"Maybe a few inches taller than you."

That gave Cloud a shining ray of hope. "Was he bigger, too?"

"Not at all. I'd say he was skinnier than you are now. I guess how you would look if you hadn't come to Midgar. He had nice arms from drumming, though."

"What's he look like now?"

"... He's handsome. And he's aging well, so don't worry about anything."

"Did you check out his hair line? His hair isn't thinning, is it?" Cloud fretted. "The last thing I need is a fucking bald spot with this shit spiking all around it."

"I think you're safe," she laughed, lighting a new cigarette.

"Did he have a lot of like, body hair? I'm not gonna wake up with a hairy back one day, am I?"

"Doubt it."

Cloud was grateful for that. "... Does anything bad run in his family? Like cancer, or any weird diseases?"

"Ask him. The only thing that's really different about him is that he wears glasses, now."

Cloud figured he could deal with glasses one day. He'd stolen Sephiroth's a couple of times to take pictures of himself and they looked pretty cute on him. He chewed on his thumbnail for a moment before he finally asked, "... Can I ask you a personal question?"

"No, thank you."

Cloud asked anyway, "Would you ever sleep with him again if you could?"

"Shit. Wow." Her eyes went wide and she blinked a few times. "No. No fucking way. He was my first love, but... seeing him now? He doesn't match my memory. I could pass him in the street and hardly recognize him, not because he looks different but because he's not who he used to be. Just like I'm not who I used to be. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, I guess it does... but what did you love most about him?"

"I don't wanna talk about it. You're not gonna like the answer, anyway."

Cloud was intrigued. "Tell me."

"You are what I loved most about him."

"That's such a mom thing to say," Cloud tutted, just as disappointed with that response as she'd predicted he'd be.

"Not in the way you might think... I dunno if this is going to make sense to you, but... there's something really sexy about seeing your man with your kid. I thought it was so hot when he fed you, or played with you, or fell asleep with you. I wanted to jump on him practically any time he got near you."

Cloud's initial reaction was a teenage wail of embarrassment, but he took half a moment to really consider that scenario. He hadn't felt any primal reproductive spark seeing Sephiroth holding Rhonda and Julie's babies, but rather a sense of irony. It was like seeing a tiger at the zoo cuddling with a stuffed animal - Sephiroth was very much a fierce, exotic creature, and seeing him cradling something so delicate had been preposterous and sweet.

But if it was their child... if Sephiroth was actually caring for that tiny person and not just going through the motions of a photo-op, Cloud could see it definitely being something potentially sexy. Maybe.

But that would be a case of adoption. And that was way down the road. And that was if Sephiroth agreed. If they were even still together by the time Cloud came to an age to make such an important commitment to care for another human being.

It was a lot of ifs. In all reality, he'd probably never experience that rush of primal lust of seeing Sephiroth care for their child. Maybe if he'd been born a female, he could simply trap Sephiroth with love and reproduce as nature intended.

His mother seemed to sense a lull in her son's attention, and rubbed his arm. "Did I gross you out?"

"No..." he answered, coming out of his thoughts, a touch of melancholy in his eyes. "Mom?... Do you wish I was straight?"

Her eyes went wide and she leaned back a bit, utterly shocked. "Where are all these fucking bizarre questions coming from?"

"I'll never have a real family."

"You do have a family, and we all love you - "

"I mean, like a husband. And kids. You know?"

"I never had a husband either." April shrugged.

"You could have had one if you really wanted one," Cloud frowned. "The other day I asked Sephiroth how he felt about like, maybe someday way down the road adopting kids. He just brushed it off."

"You two are way too young to be thinking about that. Especially you; you're still a baby yourself."

"I've always wanted kids," Cloud admitted. "I like the idea of being a family with him."

"You crack me up," April groaned with a smoker's laugh, "You're just like your Aunt Judy. You found a good man, and now you're determined to run him off with all this heavy commitment shit. Are you ovulating or something?"

Cloud rolled his eyes at the comparison to his desperate aunt. "It's not like that! But if he doesn't want a family like I do, then I'm afraid... someday we might drift apart, that's all."

April reached up and tousled Cloud's hair. "You think way too much."

"I know," he agreed, but was clearly unsatisfied.

She intently snubbed out her cigarette, and put her focus on her son. "I never wished you were straight because I thought a soul sucking woman might make you happy. But I did think it would be easier if you were straight when you were younger... because I knew school was hard for you. And I worried about you being able to find a good relationship close to home... I mean, there's not a huge gay social scene in Nibelheim. It's basically just the Men's Gardening Club, and they're all about seventy-years-old."

"As if," Cloud rolled his eyes.

"There was nothing for you in Nibelheim. I knew I'd have to lose you one day," April said, turning the pack of cigarettes in her hands over and over. "... And if you want my honest opinion, I think that if there comes a choice someday between adopting a kid and staying with Sephiroth... I'd rather you stay with Sephiroth."

"You don't want grandkids?" Cloud asked.

"All I want is to know you're taken care of."

"I'm not a helpless girl. I can take care of myself."

She thumped him against the head with her middle knuckle. "Who said girls can't take care of themselves? I'm not saying you're a girl, I'm saying you're a pansy. And pansies need plenty of taking care of!"

Cloud rubbed the sore spot she left behind on his scalp. "Remind me never to talk to you about life-important shit ever again!"

"Just let life happen, Cloud," she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. "The good news is that if you do adopt kids, they won't destroy your body like you destroyed mine."

"I should have done more damage while I had the chance," Cloud remarked.

Around eight o'clock, there was a soft knock at the door before it cracked open.

Bright green eyes peeked in before it swung open the rest of the way, and Sephiroth came in in full uniform. "There he is."

Cloud keened a bit, "Here I am!"

"Hey April," Sephiroth came into the room, touching her shoulder on his way to Cloud's bedside.

"Hello," she greeted, smiling a little as she watched him go to her son.

His leather creaked a little bit as Sephiroth leaned over to accept Cloud's open embrace. He was careful as he enveloped him in a tender hug. "I threw a fit about wantin' to see you this weekend, but I didn't mean like this."

"I'm sorry!" Cloud pouted, and craned his neck to steal a kiss. Then two, then three. It bordered on inappropriate considering his mother was only a few feet away, but Cloud couldn't resist opening his mouth just a little. He felt the hot brush of Sephiroth's tongue and sighed aloud, having no will to tone down the PDA for his mother's sake.

Sephiroth tried to pull back, but Cloud tightened his hold on the back of his head. He was able to swipe his tongue at Sephiroth's once more before he forced Cloud to let him go.

Sephiroth took a seat beside the bed with a warm grin. "Psht, he's fine. This is all an act."

"I know, I feel great! And I'm sick of sitting here!" Cloud complained, reaching out to snatch the end of Sephiroth's hair and twist his fingers around it. "Dearest, do you think you could throw your weight around and get the doctors in here so I can go? Let's all get the hell out of here and do something fun!"

"They don't listen to me..." Sephiroth smiled, tucking a piece of Cloud's hair behind his ear. His hand lingered there, fingers tracing down Cloud's neck.

Knowing her presence wasn't needed or wanted any longer, April stood up. "I'm gonna go grab a drink, and see about finding a doctor. Maybe they'll listen to me. You kids want anything while I'm up?"

"No, thank you!" Cloud chirped politely.

Sephiroth shook his head. "Nah."

It came as no surprise to her when the wet, hungry sounds of kissing were audible before the door was even finished closing.

Cloud whined a little as he greedily savored Sephiroth's lips, and then let go with a desperate growl. "This sucks so bad. I meant to totally dominate the seminar and for you to hear good things. Not this."

"It does suck, but not for the reason you think it does," Sephiroth hummed. "I love knowin' you fight so hard. I just hate seein' you hurt."

"I have to wear bracers, now," Cloud complained.

"It's common. I wear 'em too," Sephiroth took Cloud's hands, smirking a little at how delicate his bones were. He ran his thumbs over his narrow wrists thoughtfully, "Wanna take a pair of mine? Til you get some of your own?"

Cloud curled his fingers around Sephiroth's hands, and guided it to his upper thigh. A few wet kisses had made him painfully aroused, and he smiled. "I can't wait to go home..."

"Settle down," Sephiroth said, unable to resist squeezing that hard cock before pulling his hand back.

"I feel fine," Cloud insisted, running his palm over the nagging ache in his jeans.

"Your face was white earlier," Sephiroth said. Even though his color had returned, a part of Cloud was currently broken, and Sephiroth would be damned if he was going to prevent his full recovery by accommodating a momentary sexual impulse. So he rattled off some bullshit. "All the blood in your body is down in your cock. Now chill out so it can disperse back into your bloodstream, before you fall into a very dangerous and life threatenin' cardiac... pulmonary... anemia paralysis."

"You're making shit up!" Cloud laughed.

"Seriously. There's no way you're well enough to be doin' anything." Sephiroth then stood up from Cloud's bed and began to take off the more cumbersome pieces of his uniform. "Not to mention the cameras. I dunno how I can get it through your head that when you're in HQ, you're bein' watched."

"I don't give a shit about cameras! Honestly, I'm sure they're going to catch us screwing around someday, if they haven't already. Did you hear that, security spies?" Cloud called out to whomever might be listening. "I want some head and I don't mind if you watch! Send us a signal if you're okay with that!"

Cloud could have sworn the lights flickered a little.

Sephiroth was not amused, "Will you give it a rest?"

"So you were here when I was brought in?" Cloud asked, changing the subject as he watched Sephiroth change his clothes. If he couldn't touch, at least he could look.

"Yeah. I woulda stayed if I could've, but there was some stuff to do upstairs." Sephiroth took off his coat, belt and boots and left them in a pile on the floor. He squatted down to fish around in Cloud's bag of clothes, and then gave him a crooked glance. "You're wearin' my shirt."

"I know!" Cloud said, hugging himself. "It looks cute on me."

"What do ya expect me wear?"

Cloud smiled sweetly at his half naked boyfriend, "What's wrong with what you've got on?"

"Geez..." Sephiroth gauged all of Cloud's shirts until he came back with one that might fit him, and stretched it over his head. It was a red Nibelheim Mountain Lions jersey that barely touched the top of his pants, and gripped onto his biceps like he was about to burst out of it at any moment. The color of the shirt also made his skin flush bright red by association, and Sephiroth regarded himself in the mirror woefully. "... I look dumb."

"You look like a sunburnt slut. And you're stretching my shirt out!"

"Watch this - " Sephiroth took a deep breath and then pushed out his stomach as far as it would go, creating a big, rounded air bubble underneath corded muscle. He struggled to speak, but was able to grunt out : "... You're finally gonna be a daddy, Cloud."

Cloud giggled wildly, patting his boyfriend's hollow belly. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

It was at that moment that April Strife re-entered the room.

"Now that's cute," she commented.

Sephiroth gave her a cheeky smile, until Vincent Valentine walked in behind her.

Cloud had never seen Sephiroth move so fast. Suddenly he was standing next to the bed with the Nibelheim Mountain Lions jersey yanked down tight. Unfortunately, the red of the jersey only added to the bright blush on his face, "Vincent?... What are you doin' here?"

Vincent was paused at the door, "Well I uh - "

"Sephiroth's pregnant!" Cloud interrupted.

He shot a look at his boyfriend. "Cloud's about to have another unfortunate accident."

Vincent seemed to have a lapse of purpose, until he spat it out, "Ah - Laz said you were probably down here - sorry to pull you away Seph, but I need to talk to ya. And this broad was smokin' in the hallway so I told her to knock it off before she gets kicked out. She told me to go fuck myself, and the minute I heard her talk I knew she had to have somethin' to do with uh you there, so uh, here I am."

"There you are," April muttered, wagging her half burnt cigarette between her fingers.

"I heard about the accident. How you feelin'..." Vincent groped for something to refer to Sephiroth's boyfriend as, and came back with, "- Strife?"

"I'm feeling great! Thanks for asking, dad."

Vincent staggered back a step at the term, groping for the door handle. "Fantastic. Seph? Just meet me out in the hall."

Once Vincent was out, Sephiroth attacked Cloud, "Gimme my shirt! Put your arms up!"

"Fine!" Cloud laughed, and allowed the oversized garment to slip up off of his frame.

Sephiroth tore the small jersey off and snaked into the pullover. He met Vincent out in the hallway with an apologetic shrug. "Sorry about that, just goofin' off. What'd you need?"

"They found a bunch of bodies at the Crater base," Vincent told him, getting straight to the point. "One of them was a retired SOLDIER."

Sephiroth leaned a hand against the wall. "Shit..."

"They've got the place on lockdown now. The cameras were running on an eight hour loop, which offers the investigation jack shit. The bodies were found too late to replay any useful footage. But some cameras were disconnected entirely. Whoever's behind it is a pro, maybe even an inside job."

"You think it was a group, or an individual?" Sephiroth wondered.

"One female doing recon. That's my guess based on silent style of the intrusion. Plus some items were taken from a female Turk agent. A Prada snow jacket. She's inconsolable about the loss." Vincent leaned against the wall with a chuckle.

"I'm a little more inconsolable about losing a veteran SOLDIER," Sephiroth growled, a little heated about the cavalier way Turks always acted about the loss of life.

"That base is nothing but a waste of time. Toldja that," Vincent pushed off the wall and straightened his coat. "We don't have to go up there yet, but I'm overseeing the investi - "

"We?" Sephiroth groaned. "I'm not goin' back up there."

"I'm tellin' you right now you're prolly gonna have to," Vincent said, pulling out a cigarette just to feel it between his fingers. "That Strife broad made me wanna smoke bad. Wanna go outside?"

Sephiroth ignored the invitation. "But why would I need to go up there to investigate? What good would I do?"

"Your precious vets might like a little comfort. Whoever did this got the drop on some good Turks, too."

"Who knows about this?"

"The Turks. You're the only SOLDIER that needs to know as of now..." Vincent put his cigarette behind his ear. "Plus you know a little somethin' about espionage. Wouldn't hurt to have another pair of eyes."

Rhonda was approaching from the far end of the hallway, already waving at the pair of them. They let the conversation stop where it was, and Vincent held up a hand to greet her back. "Hey gorgeous."

"Hey you two," Rhonda said, hitting a clipboard against her thigh. "I have some interesting news about Cloud."

Sephiroth lifted his eyebrows, not finding anything ominous in her tone. "Yeah?"

"If anyone else found out what I'm about to tell you, he could face some consequences for the injury," Rhonda warned him.

"They limit broke," Sephiroth stated. "Big deal."

"True..." She sighed, moving the clipboard to cover her head in preparation for a proverbial shit storm. "But Cloud has marijuana in his system. Fresh. As in he was probably smoking yesterday or the day before."

Sephiroth laughed a little in anticipation for a punch line. When none came, he scoffed. "No way. Cloud doesn't smoke weed. Cigarettes, maybe. Hookah, sure. Not fuckin' weed."

"Urine doesn't lie."

Vincent found something very funny in that statement.

Sephiroth shook his head, "There's no way. Cloud is not a stoner. He's way too serious about SOLDIER to do that. He doesn't have time to do that."

The three of them peeked into the narrow window into Cloud's room. He was shirtless, finishing up a package of Oreos and closely regarding one of the cookies. He said to his mother, "Do these symbols actually mean anything?"

"I dunno," she responded absently, looking at her phone and shamelessly smoking in the room.

Cloud thought to himself, running a finger over the ridges in the cookie's design. "Probably Illuminati symbolism... that you eat. So they're even watching from inside your guts."

"There's not a chance that he could be a pot head," Vincent drawled sarcastically, backing away from the window.

"Shut up," Sephiroth crossed his arms, usually finding Cloud's ditziness a source of amusement, but now it was just embarrassing. "What now?"

Rhonda sighed. "I'm not reporting this to the Academy. I doubt it had anything to do with the accident."

"Report it. Please report it," Sephiroth implored. "Make him face the consequences if he's gonna be a retard."

"Lighten up General," Rhonda bumped her elbow into his arm. "There wouldn't be any Cadets if we wrote them up for every little thing they do. His system was squeaky clean just a couple weeks ago, he probably just tried it. Just tell him to knock it off, he'd be in trouble if I told the Academy."

"He's in way worse trouble than that," Sephiroth suddenly yanked the door open. "I'm gonna tell his mom."

"Tell me what?" April asked, glancing up from her phone and attempting to hide her lit cigarette.

Cloud's eyes were wide and fearful, half an Oreo in his mouth. "... Tell her what?"

"Cloud smoked pot."

After a long squeal of panic, Cloud spat the chewed up Oreo into the plastic sleeve. "I did not! I can explain! Let me explain! I only tried it - "

"You tried what?" April roared, standing up violently from her seat.

"A cookie!" Cloud shrank down flat on the hospital bed. "I was really bus sick and it was just ate one pot cookie because my friend - "

"You ate what?"

"My friend is Wutainese!"

A few minutes later, one of the nurses at the station approached Cloud's room to find Vincent, Rhonda and Sephiroth peering into the window.

"Did someone press the 'Help' button?" the assistant nurse asked.

Rhonda pulled away from the scene unfolding in Cloud's room to give her a wide smile. "He's fine. Bring the doctor to give him a final check, please. And an ice pack."

Once April beat the living hell out of her son, Cloud was given the chance to explain his chronic motion sickness in detail. Rhonda prescribed him some pills, the doctors took a good look at his wrists and hand x-rays, and he was given one final Cure.

April then hugged and kissed him goodbye. She had classes to teach in the morning, and it was a tedious drive back to Junon. Sephiroth and Cloud rolled through a drive-thru and took some tacos home. Since Sephiroth had gotten a bit of work done that night, the Shin-Ra gods took pity on him and allowed him to have Monday off with Cloud.

Sephiroth supposed he had a little apologizing to do, but he wasn't going to fucking do it.

"You aren't supposed to get involved with my school shit!" Cloud complained.

"Tough," was Sephiroth's rebuttal.

"You said at the start of our relationship that you weren't going to! That was your condition! So what's different now?"

"Everything," was Sephiroth's answer.

"And why'd you have to tell my mom about the pot cookies?"

"Because," was Sephiroth's reasoning.

These were all very valid answers when coming from the General. So Cloud accepted his fate that Sephiroth was extremely bossy, meddling, and mean. He looked damn good while he did it though, so it was something Cloud would happily live with.

They sat on Sephiroth's couch, eating tacos and watching a show about catching monsters. Cloud was tired and uninterested, and soon crawled over into Sephiroth's lap. "Take me to bed."

"Yeah?" Sephiroth asked, as it didn't really seem like a seductive request, but more or less a mode of transportation.

"Yeah. I don't care what we do there. I could go for anything... kissing... sleeping... talking... fucking... anything. Just as long as it's you and me in bed. That's where I wanna be."

Sephiroth agreed that anything taking place in his bed was acceptable, and turned off the lights and TV. He obliged in carrying his boyfriend to the bedroom and gently dropped him on the mattress.

Cloud immediately rolled onto his stomach and rubbed his face against the pillow he usually used. He curled up just so, and the baggy flannel bottoms he had on dipped low on his spine, making visible a tiny peek of his asscrack.

Sephiroth rubbed that one soft curve on the lean line of Cloud's body, and shifted closer to kiss the back of his head. "You tired?"

Cloud was already asleep.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

CHAPTER IMAGES!

Baby clone and Aerith – owmyhearteries dot deviantart dot com / art / Blonde-Ambition-Ch-30-Terminator-392866505

Seph and Cloud – owmyhearteries dot deviantart dot com / art / Blonde-Ambition-Ch-30-Braver-392866877

A/N

1 – Thanks for all the nice reviews from last time! And the constant, abusive demands for more! Nothing says loving like death threats, I always say! I think a few even threatened to haunt me even after death if I didn't update this soon, which certainly spurred me into action.

2 – I have news for you. I work as a digital artist at a t-shirt printing shop, and have been tossing around the idea to maybe start up a little webstore. Shirts will be a fun addition to the stuff I sell at cons, but it might also be fun to do like, fandom, custom, or just random kind of shirts online. If you'd like to stay updated with that, I actually have a webpage – nothing is up there right now, I'm still getting all the kinks worked out. The website is …. www dot dirtyrubbersonline dot com.

3 – Yeah, I'm weird enough to try to make Dirty Rubbers an actual thing.


	31. Strange Addiction

Angeal didn't let the class panic when Cloud and William ended their fight in two bloody piles of unconscious cadet parts.

To his veteran eyes this was no big deal, and he ordered them to get up and walk it off. But despite several cures for each of them, the two young men were still losing blood and clearly in need of additional medical attention. Angeal cursed the boys for forcing the finale of his weekend seminar into a premature climax. He'd printed out little certificates of completion and was looking forward to presenting them Tyra Banks- style, but the vibe was gone.

Sephiroth had missed Cloud terribly that weekend. When he got a call from Cloud's phone early Sunday afternoon, he'd been naked in his kitchen, preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He nearly dropped his phone in his haste to answer it, and had to pause for a moment to mask his enthusiasm.

"Hey baby, you comin' home yet?"

A burly voice responded. "Don't ever call me that again."

Sephiroth recoiled. "Angeal?"

"So guess what, Strife broke a limit. He was fighting with another kid and they both broke together; it was pretty sweet because this weekend has been boring as shit. Violent story short - they messed each other up a little bit, and we're flying back and will be at HQ in about an hour. Thought you should know, see you soon -"

"Hey! Wait a minute! Can I talk to him?"

"He's indisposed right now. You'll see him in an hour. Gotta run - "

"Wait!" Sephiroth tried to laugh, but it was a little too loud. "He's okay, right?"

"Sure. They'll both be fine once they get some blood back in them."

"Blood?"

"They're leaving most of it on the ground," Angeal leaned over Cloud to observe as his white lips trembled from shock and his wide blue eyes faded out of focus. He'd bitten open the inside of his cheek, and there was an unending bubble of blood from his mouth that was now leaking across the side of his face. "Listen, I don't wanna talk on a pink cell phone anymore, so you'll see him soon -"

"What'd you do in the meantime? What'd you give him?" Sephiroth stammered. "A potion? Give him another one!"

"We didn't bring anything chemical."

"Why the fuck not? Chemical is the shit that actually works!"

"This was a good opportunity for the Juniors to practice minor healing. They got some surprise practice in critical healing, too."

Sephiroth took an aggressive spoonful of peanut butter and shoved it into his mouth. "So a fuckin' Junior's flimsy ass magic is holdin' Cloud together right now?"

"They did a pretty decent job," Angeal reassured.

The breath left Sephiroth as he leaned heavily against the counter. "Is he in pain?"

"How should I know?"

"Is he responsive at all?"

"I'm not sure, I can't tell if he passed out with his eyes open or just doesn't want to talk to me. But he hasn't voided his bowels or anything, so there's nothing to worry about yet."

Sephiroth slumped against his counter until his face was pressed against the granite. "... Oh my god."

"Give me a break, this is routine crap."

"Cloud's not a routine individual," Sephiroth picked himself up off the counter and went for more peanut butter. "You know how many missions I've spent wipin' Zack's ass for you? And you can't even take care of Cloud for one fuckin' lame seminar?"

"First of all, my seminars are not lame..." Angeal frowned at his abandoned pile of completion certificates. "Second, when I asked you to watch Zack he was way too young to be a SOLDIER and an idiot. Third, you didn't tell me to take care of Strife. You told very me specifically to break him."

"You weren't supposed to literally break him, you fat fuck!"

Safe in the knowledge that he had less body fat than Sephiroth, Angeal took a calm breath. "What end result would you like out of this conversation?"

"Act like you give a shit."

"It's not my job to give a shit about your boyfriend. It's not my job to even make this phone call to let you know he got hurt, but I did because I'm a nice, caring guy. To be an unbiased General, you should also ask how Strife's opponent is doing."

"I'm real concerned about Cloud's opponent," Sephiroth mocked sarcastically, and began eating jelly out of the jar. "He's probably twice Cloud's size. I swear that kid's never been in a fair fight in his life."

Thinking back to the short conversation he'd shared with Cloud last night about his potential for SOLDIER and his fear of Sephiroth's subtle discouragement, Angeal felt a rush of actual anger at his friend. "You've had a lot of unnatural advantages. You've had a lot of strength built into you, and you've had a whole team of scientists making sure your scrawny butt grew up the way it did. Your boyfriend here has zero advantage. So why don't you stop insulting him with this overly concerned mommy bullshit, and act like you would for any comrade who's been injured during their first limit break. You should be proud."

Sephiroth was trapped on a pause with the jelly spoon in his mouth. He eventually took it out to reply, "... I am. I just wanna make sure he's okay."

"I'm telling you that he is. In fact, he's faring better than his opponent who is twice his size. And it was the fairest fight out of anyone else in the class because your boyfriend is crazy fast, and we both know that's more important than being big. If Strife had been wearing proper gear, he might have killed the other kid." Angeal then tsked down at the gross angle Cloud's hands were lying in. "My fault he wasn't wearing wrist guards. Happy accident, though! No fatalities."

Sephiroth gave a slow smile and sucked more peanut butter off his spoon thoughtfully. He assumed most of what he heard about Cloud's progress was bullshit, but he knew Angeal wouldn't blow smoke up his ass. "So wait, go over the whole fight. Gimme a play by play. How was Cloud standin' and wh -"

"I'm still talking on a pink cell phone. Read about it in the seminar report."

"Aw c'mon!"

"I'll say it again - it's not my job to give a shit about your boyfriend. It's not Zack's job, not Rhonda's job, and not Elena's job... she told me what you did to her the other night. You asked her to drive all the way downtown to pick Strife up, and then acted like a dick to her? That's not cool."

Sephiroth was scowling. "I don't have to be cool."

"I've known you since you were thirteen. I know that you're not cool."

"I've known you since you were sixteen, and you've always been a fuckin' nag."

"Let me hear a thank you."

"For what?" Sephiroth cried.

"For everything I've done for you."

"Thank you, Angeal, for breakin' my boyfriend like I asked you to, and then callin' to tell me he hasn't voided his bowels. Thank you for givin' me an average of four days off a month..." Sephiroth's sarcasm abated slightly. "... Just to sleep next to him. And thanks for the two weeks off this summer. Thanks for lettin' me text in meetings."

"Keep going," Angeal demanded.

Sephiroth had to smile. "Thanks for all the advice you gave me when me an' Cloud were startin' out and I had no idea what the fuck I was doin'. Although I never really asked for the advice, you just kinda gave it."

"And specifically thank me for teaching you how to use Slow on your dick."

"Cloud should be the one to thank you for that," Sephiroth grinned, screwing on the lid of the peanut butter jar.

"For all of that, you're welcome. See? That's what having manners is like."

"Please feel free to eat my cornhole," Sephiroth replied politely.

"Generous offer, but no thank you," Angeal answered in kind. With the glory of another successful lecture, he concluded. "And I promise that Strife is just fine. Now quit being a little bitch."

"... Text me a picture of him?" Sephiroth cleared his throat. "Please? Thank you."

Angeal almost said no, but he'd been a sucker for Sephiroth since he was a teenager. The lonely, skinny little brat had followed him around for years and that didn't seem to be changing anytime soon. He wiped most of the blood off Cloud's face and cropped his blood soaked tank top out of the picture.

Sephiroth made a grateful sound as the picture reached him. "You're right, he doesn't look that bad. So the ship's already in the air?"

"Yep. I'm closing the pink cell phone now."

"Can I ask a serious favor, though?" Sephiroth let out a breath. "Can you just... not look through the pictures on Cloud's phone, please? And make sure it doesn't go anywhere?"

"I respect people's privacy," Angeal insisted, shutting the phone. Curiosity immediately got the better of him and he opened it back up. But it only took one glimpse of Sephiroth's pasty white flesh to make Angeal hurl the little phone deep into Cloud's backpack and zip it up tight.

It only took the air lift twenty more minutes to reach their location. By that time the rest of the students were staring from the relative warmth of the bus. The assistants loaded William onto the aircraft first, as he was far bigger, heavier, and required three dudes to haul his weight. Cloud was left alone, curled up on a picnic bench.

"Think they'll forget about Cloud and leave him?" Someone muttered, causing several nearby boys to laugh.

Someone else grunted. "Why'd that little faggot get to limit break? That's so random."

"William deserved it. Not Cloud, though."

There was more muttering agreement from the jealous class as they watched the slow action outside.

Skylar stared at Cloud, his eyes almost tearing up at how tiny he looked. His brain screamed at him to get off the bus and go comfort him, or just see if he was alright. Skylar finally jumped up, grabbed his bag and slipped off of the bus. Before he could talk himself out of it, he marched up to where Angeal was supervising before takeoff. "Excuse me, Sir?"

Angeal turned to him like a stone gargoyle, his face hard and chiseled and unreadable. And out of that serious face of doom came a small, "Oh. Hi."

"Hi," Skylar answered, and then recovered with a more formal, "Sorry for bothering you, Sir. Are you riding back with them?"

"Yes." Angeal answered.

"If there's room for me, could I ride back with you?"

"Sure."

"Really?" Skylar blurted. That was far easier than he thought it would have been.

Angeal hadn't blinked once during this entire exchange. "If you want."

"Okay. Thank you!" Skylar gave him a smile before he took the liberty of gently scooping Cloud up off the picnic table. The three guys who had just dragged William's muscle-heavy carcass into the chopper seemed grateful for the break, and showed Skylar where to put him.

Cloud wouldn't entirely remember the conversation, but as Skylar buckled him into his seat he mumbled, "We cool?"

Skylar was surprised that he was even awake. "Shh. Sleep."

"We cool, though?"

"Stop trying to talk like you're from Midgar, you sound so stupid." Blood was getting everywhere, and Skylar yanked off his jacket and used it to wipe Cloud off. "Will you stop bleeding, please?"

"Loan me a tampon," Cloud requested drowsily, not even coherent enough to smile at his own joke but never too far gone to talk about his imaginary vagina.

Skylar gave a small laugh through his nose as he folded his jacket for Cloud's spikey head to lay back against. "... I'm sorry for what I said yesterday."

Cloud's eyes were closed. "Shhhhut the fuck up."

"It's true. You're strong, and awesome, and you do belong in SOLDIER. I didn't know what I was talking about when I said Sephiroth should have made you quit. I'm sorry I said all of... that bullshit to you."

Cloud cracked his eyes open. "Who cares? I don't care."

"I care a lot."

"I don't care." Cloud repeated with a low whimper. "Are we friends?... I would miss you so much if we weren't friends. You're one of my favorite people."

Skylar might have had trouble understanding his slurring, Nibelheim-accented voice if he hadn't gotten drunk with him so often over the course of their friendship, but as it was he understood perfectly. "You're one of my favorite people, too. I'll always be your friend. I love you, Cloud."

Cloud gained a double chin as he recoiled back in his seat. Only one of his eyes was alert enough to open halfway, the other squinted shut in repulsion.

Skylar had to laugh at the ugliest face he'd ever seen Cloud make, as it was all the response he needed. "But I'm going to get over that. I'm glad I'm your friend, and that's enough."

Cloud mumbled something, his useless bandaged hand flopped against Skylar's in some form of platonic affection.

"Hey," Angeal called as the helicopter's engine gunned, stirring up snow, wind and noise. "We're taking off like, right now. You might wanna buckle up, or... hold on."

"Seph's tags!" Cloud suddenly squeaked, lifting his head up and immediately weaving in his seat due to vertigo. Despite his dizziness, he patted his bandaged chest clumsily. "Where'd they go?"

Skylar had noticed Cloud wearing them sometimes. He never asked what they were, because the romantic notion of it just hurt too much to consider, but he could guess that they belonged to Sephiroth by the way Cloud treated them. Sometimes Cloud would clutch them, or play with the chain, or take them off to slip them into his pocket during drills. And sometimes if Skylar peeked down Cloud's shirt just right, they'd be there kissing his chest like a warning.

Through the noise and chaos of takeoff, Skylar carefully pulled at Cloud's shirt, searching for those goddamned dog tags. His heart dropped a bit when he didn't find them, and he spoke loudly against Cloud's ear. "Were you wearing them during the fight?"

Cloud's eyes were closed again, "Pocket."

"I'm not going in your pocket, dude!"

"Please?"

Skylar took a breath and hesitantly touched Cloud's thigh. He didn't look at the length of his legs or between them, but instead focused on getting into the stupidly tight little pocket of Cloud's fatigues with minimal contact. He eventually gave up on being coy and wriggled his fingers in to get it over with, and when he felt cold metal, he yanked. Skylar looked at Sephiroth's dog tags up close, finding nothing special about the thin slices of metal. The chopper was quickly gaining altitude, and he experienced a brief, morbid urge to just toss them out the open side. Instead Skylar carefully draped them over Cloud's head. "Here they are."

Cloud gratefully clutched onto the tags as best he could with broken, bandaged hands. "Phone?"

"Christ, will you just fucking sleep? Your shit's safe, don't worry."

"Thanks," Cloud whispered before his unfocused eyes snapped open as the helicopter took a sharp turn in the air. He bellowed, "Are we flying right now?"

"Of course not, stupid!" Skylar lied, shouting over the noise and holding onto the edge of Cloud's seat for dear life. "You're just dizzy."

"Oh," Was the last thing Cloud had to say before he slipped out of consciousness for good.

"Come on," Angeal called, reaching out to grab Skylar's arm. "The pilot's in a hurry. It's gonna be bumpy."

Skylar took the man's hand and allowed himself to be yanked into the seat beside him. Once he was strapped in, Skylar glanced over, wondering if Cloud had actually been telling the truth about Angeal having a crush on him. He certainly didn't seem affected by his presence, all his attention was on a field laptop where he was busy typing up the student analysis and incident report of the weekend.

Skylar took the opportunity to stare, curiously studying Angeal's sharp, rugged profile. Angeal wasn't ugly at all, he was hard and handsome and the exact opposite of everything Skylar had been chasing. He once considered himself a bottom, but he became bored with it. His sexual style had evolved, and he couldn't imagine going back to lying there with his legs in the air while some random jock had their way with him.

But then again... if that random jock happened to be Angeal Hewley, it wouldn't be so boring. He had a masculine jaw, and soft, moist lips underneath all the scruff. Skylar had never kissed someone with such coarse, pronounced facial hair before, and imagined what it might feel like against his smooth shaven face.

Skylar's eyes moved down his bare arms all the way to his typing fingers. That glimpse of bare flesh showed off rigid muscle, an assortment of scars, t-shirt tan lines, and dark hair dusting his forearms. Skylar imagined the rest of the man's body would have been much the same; a wall of solid muscle covered in imperfections.

Angeal stopped typing and glanced over, shouting to be heard, "Everything okay?"

Skylar nodded.

It was around three in the afternoon when they began to descend onto a medical wing's helipad at Shin- Ra HQ. They were a couple hundred feet from the top of the roof when Sephiroth suddenly crashed through the open side door, effectively causing Skylar to shout aloud like a little girl.

Angeal was far from surprised, and pointed wordlessly to where Cloud was seated.

Sephiroth went on one knee and began to gently inspect him. Cloud came awake, but just barely. He didn't speak, but gave a surprised little sob when he cracked his eyes open to find his beloved in front of him. Sephiroth didn't put any weight on him, but leaned in close to say something that was lost in the noise of the helicopter's landing.

Skylar had only met Sephiroth briefly, nearly a year ago at New Year's Eve. But he'd spied on the two of them all night, trying to get an understanding of what the hell was going on there. They made no sense at all.

That night, Sephiroth was so relaxed and sure of himself, oozing an aura of indifference. He kissed and touched Cloud whenever he wanted to, however he wanted to... but not nearly as often as Skylar would have if Cloud had been his boyfriend. And like a lovesick idiot, Cloud ate up any scrap of his affection that he was given. Cloud was smitten, beautiful, happy, drunk, having a great time... and blind to what a total asshole he was dating.

If Skylar had known Sephiroth at all, he'd have realized that the General was anxious and uncomfortable. He had an impending mission to the Northern Crater on his mind. He was forcing himself to have a good time for Cloud while a room of judgmental strangers were staring at him and waiting for him to fuck up, Skylar included. But since Skylar didn't know him, that glimpse of Sephiroth had painted a skewed picture in his mind. Anything Cloud told him about their romance was tainted by that aloof, unimpressed expression Sephiroth had been wearing that night.

Nearly a year later, this version of Sephiroth so obviously cared for Cloud, and it made Skylar... happy? It was bittersweet, but he was undeniably happy to see Sephiroth be so attentive to Cloud. In Skylar's eyes, nobody in the world was more deserving of appreciation and care.

The couple's display of affection lasted only a few seconds before the helicopter landed. Sephiroth quickly got out of the way, allowing the medical team to take Cloud and William and place them on gurneys.

Skylar was slow to unbuckle himself, feeling a little disconnected from his own body. He grabbed his bag and threw it over his shoulder, and then reached for Cloud's. But just as he took hold of the little red messenger bag with band patches safety pinned all over it, a leather gloved hand took it right out of his grip.

Sephiroth was inches away from him. "Hey, I'll take it. I'm gonna go grab some clothes and stuff for him."

He really did smell like cookies. And it was also true that Sephiroth was graceful, stunning, and his finely structured face lacked any discernable flaws under the bright afternoon glow of the sun. He was an angel. Skylar's mind was wiped blank, and he was overcome with admiration. "Sir."

There was a little bit of Cloud's blood smeared on Sephiroth's cheek. "You're Skylar, right?"

He nodded, shocked that Sephiroth knew his name, and a little bit horrified that perhaps Cloud might have told him about his emotional outburst during the seminar. He stared up at the looming, broad figure the General presented and felt himself shrivel. "... Yeah."

Sephiroth smiled, because he knew nothing about their fight. "Was he okay on the way here? Did he get sick?"

Sephiroth being so very aware that Cloud got motion sickness made Skylar feel utterly insignificant in the story of Cloud's life. He forced a smile, though. "He was fine, he slept the whole way."

Someone was beckoning Sephiroth from inside the medical lab's doors. He held a hand up to wave at them before sparing Skylar a farewell. He then paused, taking Angeal's earlier lecture to heart. "Thanks for ridin' back with him, he was probably really glad you were there. He talks about you all the time."

Skylar felt his face burn. "He does?"

"Yeah."

"He tells us all about you, too..." Skylar admitted with a tight smile. "Cloud's crazy about you."

"Cloud's just crazy. I'm glad he has friends like you lookin' out for him. If you ever need anything, just tell me." And then Sephiroth left, following Cloud's gurney because he had every right to.

"... Thank you," Skylar responded quietly, even if Sephiroth probably didn't hear it. Guilt wasn't strong enough of a word to describe how it felt to hear Sephiroth to say something kind to him. The farther away Sephiroth walked, the more his ethereal presence seemed more human and the easier it was to loathe him all over again. He had every intention of getting over Cloud, but the reality was just so hard for his heart to accept.

Why did he have to say anything to Cloud at all? Couldn't he have just accepted the inevitable with dignity? Humiliated rage overwhelmed Skylar, and his throat constricted hard in deep, bitter envy. He took his bag by the strap and slammed it against the hatch to the chopper. The impact felt so good that he did it again.

"Hey, wanna go get a drink or something?"

Skylar whirled around to stare up at Angeal, who was still hanging around near the helicopter and waiting to be noticed. He gawked slightly at the second General to creep up on him in less than two minutes. "What?"

"Wanna get a drink?"

Skylar brushed the unwashed hair out of his eyes, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. "Just us?"

Angeal hadn't had the opportunity to get recon from Cloud, but hoped that Skylar wanting to ride back with him was a good sign. Now he felt like committing suicide to escape this situation, and cursed his fucking awful judgment. "If this was unwelcome, I'm really sorry."

"It's not unwelcome... it's just that we don't even know each other."

"Haven't you ever been on a first date before?"

Skylar became a little offended, mostly because it was true that he hadn't ever been taken out on a real date in his entire life. Casual, forgettable sex between classes, at parties, or in the hallways at night didn't really count. But he lied, "Of course I've been on a date before!"

"I said first date... you know, like with someone you might not already know?"

Skylar blushed at his outburst, and at the gentle rebuttal. "It's been a really bad weekend."

"I understand."

"It's not because of you at all! It's just..." Skylar searched for a good reason to not want to go out with this man. It dawned on Skylar that he'd never, ever obtained a person that he actually wanted. He'd never, ever had sex with someone that he actually liked. Angeal was perfectly fuckable to any sane human being. Was the fact that he showed a bit of interest really such a turn off? Was Skylar's fetish being ignored for days at a time while the unattainable object of his passions made a life with someone else? Was he turning into some sort of cuckolded weirdo?

What was so scary about going out with someone from a neutral starting point? Angeal seemed nice. He didn't make Skylar want to gnash his teeth in unfulfilled desire, but why was that a specific requirement to consider going on a date with someone? He'd fuck the spine out of any drunk twink who might look a little bit like Cloud from behind, but that hardly seemed as intimate as going somewhere and attempting a conversation with a grown, sober man.

The pause extended past awkward and towards unbearable. Angeal took several steps backward, "It's alright, I'm sorry. Don't give it another thought."

Angeal gave him a wink and a tight smile before turning away. That wink made Skylar's heart thunder in his chest.

"General Hewley!"

Angeal stopped and turned halfway around. "Yeah?"

"I don't wanna waste your time! So I'll just tell you the deal breaker upfront!" Skylar began combing at his hair with jittery, nervous fingers. He ended up just brushing all of his hair back and sighing at Angeal. "Here's why you won't wanna go out with me... I'm..."

Angeal turned the rest of the way around, and the smile expanded to his entire mouth. He fully anticipated Skylar confessing some sort of deep feelings for Strife, because it was fairly obvious to the entire world that he would have become a human toilet for Sephiroth's boyfriend if given the chance. But Angeal humored him. "What?"

"I'm a top."

That was the last thing Angeal expected him to say. He could barely pick up his jaw to form words. "...That's supposed to be a deal breaker?"

"... Is it?"

"No."

An actual, unguarded smile slowly broke out onto Skylar's face. "You wanna have a drink with me?"

"Definitely."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Vincent Valentine was sitting in his company car and watching My Strange Addiction on his phone.

This particular episode was about a young man from Midgar who claimed to be in love with Mako reactor number three. That particular reactor was apparently the most unique and sensual of the nine found throughout the city. And like any young man in love, he was addicted to sneaking past security and expressing his love for reactor three physically.

Of all the things Vincent had tried in his life to get off, fucking a Mako reactor was the very last thing he would have ever thought of. It was utterly fascinating.

He was guilty of a not-so-strange addiction. Smoking cigarettes wasn't uncommon, but he started smoking only to counteract the compulsion to bite his nails. Vincent's mother used to hate seeing him do it, and would clip them so short they sometimes bled.

Collette Valentine wasn't a cruel woman, but she was extremely irritable. She had a zero tolerance policy for little boy bullshit, and Vincent spent his childhood pissing her off. She had eyes like a hawk, and would smack Vincent's hand if it even moved towards his mouth.

If ever a window separated them, Vincent would purposely bite his fingernails right in front of her. Many times she came in from gardening on their tiny inner city patio just to smack him.

She was the opposite of his father Grimoire. The man was entirely unplugged from home life, and spent his days sleeping to go work in the labs at Shin-Ra HQ overnight. He was just a tall, dark, sleepy apparition sometimes spotted shirtless in the hallway en route to the bathroom. Once in a while he'd tousle Vincent's hair and tell him to do better in school… but he didn't really care.

One Saturday night when Vincent was fourteen, his mother asked him if he'd like to go to the movies. Being fourteen and not wanting to be spotted out with his mother, he'd declined the invitation. Grimoire was at the labs, so she went on her own with intentions of meeting up with one of her friends at the theater.

On the way, her train derailed. After skidding off the tracks, it slammed into a parking garage. Although causing a lot of damage, the passengers were seemingly fine. Vincent arrived at the scene of the accident with his father, and was filled with hope at the sight of several hundred people huddled in blankets. There was absolutely no blood or gore at the scene at all. Just a lot of shaken up people standing around, sipping coffee while giving statements so that the insurance companies could screw them out of coverage later on.

They found Collette unconscious on a gurney, and were elated with relief that she had no visible injuries at all. A medic then had to break the tragic news that she had hit her head in such a way… that she'd died instantly.

Only ten people had died out of hundreds. The rest of the deceased were mangled, torn apart, or served as a cushion for another person's survival. Collette's body was left without a single scratch, which was probably the most unsettling aspect of her death.

Vincent was utterly confused as he watched them zip her up in a body bag. It took him a long time to process the fact that she wasn't being taken to the hospital to be examined, that she wasn't unconscious or in a coma. She was gone long before they arrived.

On the morning of her funeral she looked healthy and alive, but there was something so essential that was missing from who she'd been in life - movement. Where did all that manic, nervous energy go? He'd never even noticed how pretty his mother was until death forced her to hold still for a moment to allow him to really look at her.

Vincent was supposed to give a eulogy. But when it was his time to speak, he couldn't go through with it. He had no voice to speak.

She was buried outside of the city, and it was a long drive back home. The only sounds in the car was Vincent's attempt to muffle his sobbing while anxiously chewing what little was left of his fingernails. Grimoire offered Vincent a cigarette.

It was a huge relief to have something for his mouth and hands to do. And without even realizing it, he was taking much needed slow, deep breaths to ease the ache in his heart. Eventually mourning ran its course, and he was left with a ferocious craving for cigarettes.

Without Collette in his life to keep him in line, Vincent acted out like any angry, grieving young teenager. He was tall and skinny and often picked on by older boys, which eventually led to fighting, to the hospital, to arrest, and eventually to juvie.

Grimoire only had a problem with Vincent's behavior if it interfered with his nocturnal sleep schedule. One night he picked his son up from the usual police station before work. Vincent was bruised and bloodied, and smoking in the passenger seat without a care in the world.

"So, what's gonna happen in your shitty little life?" Grimoire asked him. "You gonna kill someone? You gonna end up in jail?"

"Maybe."

"Well, will ya just do it, already? Just do somethin' big and get a couple years. Maybe when you get out you'll have some fuckin' sense."

"That could happen," Vincent sighed, blowing smoke out the open window. "Or maybe I'll come work with you."

"You're not smart enough to clean shit outta toilets where I work," was Grimoire's response.

"Not in the labs. I should just enlist."

"Enlist for what?"

"I dunno, Turks probably. Some jackhole recruiter came around to everyone tonight talkin' about –"

"That recruiter was lookin' for dumbass kids with no future who wanna die young. I know you think you're tough shit, but please don't even joke about joinin' Shin-Ra like that, I don't find it funny."

Vincent's interest was sparked, because he'd never earned anything more the sleepy disdain from his dad. He smiled, lifting his ass up off the seat to dig into his back pocket. "I'm real inspired about it though! Let's look at this informative pamphlet together!"

"Stop it, Vincent."

Vincent pointed to bullet point on the flier. "Turks get special gun trainin'. They even pay you! They fuckin' give you a gun and teach ya how to use it, then pay you!"

"You're not doin' it."

"This is what I've been waitin' for to turn my life around, dad!" Vincent joked, but in reality… it was true.

It was a shining day when Vincent figured out how to rebel against his father, and the perks were a roof over his head that wasn't in his father's apartment and a monthly paycheck. He was attending the military academy the following autumn, with a class path selected for the Turks.

He wasn't sure if his mother would have been proud or not, but it enraged his father so it was the right decision to make.

The only hard part about the military academy had been the fact that he could only smoke in designated places. And for some reason, those places were nowhere near his classes, so he was constantly rushing to and from the smoke spots. It was a luxury to graduate and be able to smoke anywhere he wanted.

When a pack wasn't within reach, Vincent's fingers went straight into his mouth. And whenever his fingers went into his mouth, he thought about how his mother would have slapped his hand away. So it was imperative to keep a pack within reach, to smoke and to smoke often.

And for that reason, Vincent was rarely in the Shin-Ra building. He had an office there, but he'd never actually sat down and worked in there once in his entire career. He refused to be trapped in a room where he couldn't smoke for eight hours. Breaks weren't enough, he needed to know that he could smoke whenever he wanted to.

"Where are you?" President Shin-Ra had asked one time early on in Vincent's reign over the Turks. "I gave you a promotion and that's the last time I saw you."

"Do you feel safe, Mr. President?" Vincent had asked while waiting for his value meal at a drive thru. But the deep, serious quality of his voice made him sound like he was in a warehouse somewhere performing nipple electro-torture to enemies who threatened the Shin-Ra regime.

The President was inclined to answer, "I'm not questioning your dedication, but it would be nice to know that I actually have a Head of the Department of Administrative Research."

Vincent's eyes rolled back at his official title. "Let's put it this way... if you see me, there's an issue. If you don't see me, don't sweat anything because I'm on the beat and takin' care of you."

"That's not how I'm used to my Department Head operating."

"Veld's long gone. And I didn't exactly get any job trainin' before he split, you know? I'm makin' it up as I go along, and operatin' outside headquarters is what works for me."

"Don't think that you're the new sheriff in town just because I chose you to replace him. This was sudden, and you were the lesser of many evils. That whole department is full of thugs, I should fire you all and..."

Vincent waited in amusement before he could hold his tongue no longer. "And what? Spend time with your son? Because I'll tell ya what, makin' sure your kid doesn't overdose on Drain-O is mostly what we do."

"That boy is perfectly fine. He's just sowing his wild oats," The President groaned in good nature. "I was the same way as a teenager."

Vincent doubted that President Shin-Ra was having unprotected sex in nightclubs with sixty-year-old drug lords from Costa Del Sol when he was teenager. "... Your kid's gonna die, sir. And we're all tired of goin' to gay clubs every night to babysit him."

"Alright, alright. Just clear it with his mother, and drop him off at the facility when you get the chance."

Vincent almost felt bad because he knew that "the facility" was basically a prison for wayward rich teenagers, but it just wasn't his problem. In those days, he'd had enough guilt to carry around about his own son figure. "Yes sir, I'll drop him off tonight. If there's something you need to know, I'll be in contact with you."

"And if there's nothing I need to know?..."

"I won't be in contact with you," Vincent grinned.

The President felt oddly refreshed by this. "Well alright, then! This is a fine arrangement, you working out in the field instead of in the building. I don't want to see you for a long time!"

"Likewise!"

One nice side effect to never being in the building was that Vincent's identity was veiled in mystery. It was a case of accidental genius. The Turks all knew their leader of course, but only high level businessmen, certain SOLDIERs, and the ever important investors knew his role in the company. It gave him a lot of

freedom when he was in the HQ building, to simply pass through the crowd unnoticed rather than have hundreds of eyes on him as the leader of the infamous Turks.

Vincent belonged out of the constricting professional environment of HQ. He liked smoking, eating, watching shows on his phone. He worked 130 hours a week inside the company car, parked on the side of the road and coordinating the Turks. Much like a cop, he had a laptop set up for quick research, as well as a panel to control his own personal satellite for surveillance or missile attack. He used the satellite more often than not to tune in radio.

The episode of My Strange Addiction was getting good as the Mako reactor pervert was warned by a doctor that his dick was showing signs of Mako poisoning. The perv was confessing that he'd gladly sacrifice his health to continue making love to his reactor, when the show was abruptly cut off by an incoming call from Tseng.

He immediately answered. "Vincent."

"Get a location on me and meet us downtown soon as you can. Don't talk to medical if they call you, we need to talk first."

Vincent was already driving towards the highway, and reached out to the satellite panel to find Tseng. "Someone hurt?"

"Yes."

Tseng was a man of very few words, and Vincent was constantly irritated by this trait. He raised his voice a bit. "Who's hurt?"

"Cissnei."

"Who else is with you?"

"Elena and a civilian." Tseng's voice was unsteady. "Medical is already on their way, they'll beat you here. I don't have a story for them."

"They're fuckin' doctors, they don't need a story. Don't let them push you around. Turks ask questions, not doctors."

"Yes sir," Tseng agreed, sounding a bit more confident.

"How's Elena holdin' up?"

"Fine," Tseng affirmed.

"Got your location, I'll be there in half an hour," Vincent said. "Is it safe for you to stay there?"

"No, but I think you need to look at the scene while it's fresh."

"Don't let medical clean anything up." Vincent sighed. "There a bar or somethin' nearby?"

"Two on this block. And a Starbucks."

"Go to the Starbucks. Don't let Elena leave with medical, I wanna see you both." Vincent hung up the phone and focused on getting there as quickly as he could.

It was always nighttime below the plate. Vincent pulled up to the curb outside of the Starbucks in question, and easily spotted Tseng and Elena seated across from each other outside, and seated beside Tseng was a young lady in a pink dress he'd seen around. Elena was smoking a cigarette. Other than that, nobody at the table was talking or moving.

Vincent put his hands in his pockets and approached, his mouth pulling to the side to see that there was a coffee waiting for him, but neither Turk had ordered anything for themselves. He pulled out a seat beside Elena, stretching an arm out to pull her close as he dropped down. "You okay?"

Elena leaned into the contact, tapping the ash off her cigarette. "Yes sir."

"You should see what happened to Cissnei, though!" Aerith exclaimed.

Vincent rapped his knuckles on the table in front of her to silence her. "Who are you?"

"It's me!" she laughed in disbelief.

"Me who?"

"... Aerith Gainsborough. I date Zack Fair. We've met several times."

"I don't recall," he lied. At several professional and social gatherings, he'd overheard her speak very ill of Sephiroth behind his back and to his face. Therefore, Vincent had something of a beef with her that he hadn't gotten the opportunity to act upon until this very moment. "Remind me, you got any rank in Shin-Ra?"

"I most certainly do not, but – "

"Then pipe down until I ask you a question," Vincent interrupted, before putting his elbow on the table and giving Tseng a long look. When nothing was said, he threw out a, "Well?"

"Two hours ago I received a distress call from Aerith that there was a monster in her place of residence. Zack's in Wutai and she's pregnant, so he asked the Turks to be on call if she needed anything."

"This sounds like it's gonna be a long story," Vincent groaned, reaching out for his coffee.

Elena was still staring at her cigarette. She'd been in an on again, off again relationship with Cissnei since their Academy days. Vincent didn't know much about it, other than that sometimes they wanted to be paired up on missions together, and sometimes they couldn't stand the sight of each other. As far as he knew, they were in a good place at the moment.

Vincent recognized the vacant look on Elena's sharp little face. He smoothed the back of her glossy blonde hair and rested his arm on the back of her chair. "Elena, what kinda monster was it?"

Elena took a small puff of her cigarette. "... It's difficult to rationalize."

Vincent emitted a breathy rattle of a laugh. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It's hard to put into words," Tseng admitted.

"Put into words? I'm not askin' you to write me a fuckin' haiku, just tell me what you were dealin' with."

Elena took a longer drag off her cigarette. "It doesn't make sense what we dealt with tonight."

"You two are pros, and I trust you. You tell me you saw a ghost, and I'll believe you. You tell me aliens abducted you and tried to fuck you, and I'll believe you. It can't be any harder to put into words than that. Spit it out."

Tseng folded his hands on the table and spat it out. "It was a clone from the medical lab. One of the ones that look like Sephiroth."

Vincent thought about that for several long moments. He slowly pulled his arm off the back of Elena's chair and patted his coat pocket until he found a pack of cigarettes, and pulled one out with his teeth. He wasn't in a hurry to light it, and once he'd taken a drag, he melted back against his seat.

Everyone knew that the medical labs considered Sephiroth the model SOLDIER, and were busy trying to replicate that ideal warrior. Not with any great success, however. A small division of the Turks and SOLDIERs paired up to aid the labs in biohazard clean-up, which was not as simple as burning bodies and sweeping away the ash. There was a constant flow of cadavers leaving the labs, and they helped discreetly transport the materials.

They also organized a supply of willing participants. There were a lot of poor people in the slums and surrounding areas who were willing to forfeit their bodies to science in exchange for food, shelter and a little compensation for their time. The lucky ones were unfit to be a part of any experimentation and dismissed. But most of them never left the labs once they arrived, unless it was in a body bag.

Sephiroth was the only one to ever walk out of the lab. The poor kid was only twenty-three and already saddled with more responsibility than anyone his age was equipped to deal with. Anyone else would have crumpled. Sephiroth proved himself as more than capable, but it still wasn't good enough as far as the medical labs were concerned.

Vincent thought to just a few hours prior, catching him goofing off with his weird little foreign boyfriend in the same walls that had been his prison. Despite one son-of-a-bitch struggle through life, Sephiroth was fucking happy and Vincent wanted to keep it that way.

"First of all..." Vincent began. "Sephiroth doesn't find out about this."

"No need to inform him," Tseng agreed.

"No way," Elena shook her head.

Aerith didn't speak.

"Tell me what happened in detail," Vincent urged.

Tseng didn't smoke often, but Elena's pack was sitting on the table and he helped himself. Having his hands busy made it easier to talk. "We showed up at the church and Aerith told us to be quiet because it was sleeping. She didn't tell us it was humanoid, she called it a monster the entire time."

"Interestin' choice of words," Vincent commented, his red eyes narrowing as they slid towards her direction.

Elena interjected, "She told us that she didn't want us to kill it, but to take it back to the lab where it belongs."

"How do you know where a Jenova clone would belong?" Vincent asked, giving his cigarette a tap.

Aerith said nothing.

"She's not strictly civilian," Tseng admitted, earning a sharp glare from her.

"Hey, what do you know over there?" Vincent asked, pointing a finger.

"Remember a guy called Gast who used to oversee the medical lab?" Tseng asked, and then became embarrassed. "It was probably before your time... nineteen or twenty years ago."

"You don't gotta worry about my feelings, I been at this for twenty-four years and I'm fuckin' proud of it." Vincent then scratched his cheek. "I dunno Gast though, those assholes are all the same to me."

"My father's not an asshole," Aerith blurted.

Tseng gave her a dubious look. "Well, that was supposed to be kept a secret."

"You were about to tell him!" Aerith cried.

"No I wasn't, I was about to lie. Anyways, now you know Aerith's his daughter."

"So what?" Vincent huffed.

Tseng rolled his eyes just slightly, "He's a criminal on the top ten Shin-Ra's Most Wanted list. He abandoned the company and stole a bunch of materials from the labs to continue research on his own. The lab doesn't know about Aerith's connection to him. She and Zack keep it under wraps."

"Keep your stupid secret, I already forgot about it," Vincent dismissed, taking another long drink of coffee. "But if she knows about clones, she shoulda known to warn you guys. She probably just didn't want the labs up in her place if she's avoidin' 'em, so she put you guys in unnecessary danger. That makes her a cunt in my book."

"I'm sorry," Tseng muttered to her, always rigid and proper even if he did agree slightly.

"I've heard it before," Aerith deadpanned, seeing so much family resemblance between Vincent and Sephiroth that she wished they'd have just called the labs instead.

"You're not a cunt," Elena interjected, clenching her fists on the table. "Cunt is not an insult. I love cunt. Cunt is a fantastic thing. What you are is a fool. If we'd have known it was a clone, we would have sent an entire fucking SOLDIER fleet. Cissnei might not have..."

"What happened to her?" Vincent finally asked.

Elena turned to Vincent, hiding part of her face from everyone else's view. It came out as a strained whisper, but it was just as painful to say at any volume. "It ripped her... left arm. Off."

"Off?" Vincent whispered back hoarsely. "What?"

Elena's lower lip shook. "It took her arm off."

"... You're sittin' there talkin' to me about this slit's boring life story and Cissnei got a fuckin' limb taken? Make me understand this!" Vincent implored Tseng, his eyes wide in disbelief. "Make me understand how this happened to you guys. You had guns, I'm assumin'?"

"It was strong." Tseng told him. "SOLDIER third class, at least."

Elena leaned closer to Vincent, still speaking quietly to avoid releasing the sobs that were caught in her throat. "And it was little... I understand kind of why Aerith thought we could handle it. It was about five years old, but with motor skills like a SOLDIER."

Vincent almost forgot about his cigarette, but quickly brought it to his lips. "So you're tellin' me that a child clone did this to Cissnei?... How? Why was it even out of the fuckin' lab in the first place?"

Elena shook her head, a tear finally slipping down her cheek. "I don't know."

"Hey sweetheart, I'm not yellin' at you," Vincent told her.

"I know, but I'm mad as fucking hell," she growled, wiping her face. "It got away."

Vincent huddled in close to them and lowered his voice. "Then let's make it quick so I can look around. I need the whole story, don't let me interrupt- just keep on talkin' and get it out."

Tseng spoke quickly. "She didn't see this thing as a real threat. The appearance of the clone made her underestimate it. We all did until we were actually trying to catch it."

"What's it look like, exactly?" Vincent asked.

"Approximately four feet tall, forty-five pounds, light complexion, green eyes, very short silver hair, and was wearing women's clothing. Something of Aerith's, maybe -"

"No way that jacket belonged to Aerith," Elena interjected with a judgmental glance across the table.

"Designer clothes are a waste of money!" Aerith shot back. "I only wear organically grown and fair trade cotton, and that's far more important than paying a thousand gil for a stupid slab of leather."

"What are these broads talkin' about?" Vincent wondered to Tseng.

"Can we drop the archaic sexist terms, please?" Aerith cried. "It's not the 30's, and I'm not your secretary."

"Well that's good news," Vincent hummed around his cigarette. "Now keep goin', what else can you tell me?"

"It knew us, somehow. It knew all of our names, personal information, our connections to General Sephiroth and to each other. It tried to make us feel sorry for it, and begged us not to take it back to the lab. It even asked to make a phone call. When it felt it had run out of options, it physically attacked me. Elena opened fire, first aiming to disable and then aiming to kill. She was able to get a shot in the hamstring area of the clone, but that didn't have an effect on its speed. He then escaped the building, ran south onto 4th street and made it two blocks before we caught up. At that point, Miss Gainsborough used a staff to electrocute the clone."

"You did that?" Vincent commented, actually looking at her.

"I have to know how to defend myself," she said pointedly.

"More than defended, she charred the thing," Elena added. "I thought she killed it."

Tseng continued, "It was still breathing, and Cissnei was holding down the arms while I went about zip-tying him up. He fought out of Cissnei's grip and caused major injury to her in the process. We were shocked by the extent of her injuries, and the clone escaped."

"What exactly did it know about Sephiroth? What did this thing say?" Vincent wondered.

"It mostly babbled," Tseng looked tired, and rubbed beneath both of his eyes. "Just... crazy talk. It's hard to recall much."

"Anything else I need to know?" Vincent asked, draining the rest of his coffee. "Thanks for this, by the way."

Tseng shrugged. "That's all I can tell you. We lost sight of it."

"It was weird..." Elena had a puzzled look on her face as she stared at the burning end of a freshly lit cigarette. "... It knew about the time I got drunk and drank all the fish out of Julie's fishbowl."

Vincent allowed a beat to pass before a short laugh escaped him. "... Sorry."

Elena gave a small smile. "That happened two years ago at Julie's old apartment, with Rhonda, Sephiroth and Cissnei. How could a clone know something like that?"

"You know how lab shit is," Vincent made a vague rolling motion with his hand. "They do all sorts of memory assimilation and... just all kinds of shit they shouldn't be doing."

Elena didn't seem satisfied with that explanation. "But... how?"

"Look, babe..." Vincent began stretching his spine and giving a tired look to the sky. He was looking for stars, but all he saw was the bottom of the plate. He forgot it was early evening, being downtown just made every moment feel like the dead of night. "I can't answer you about the hows and whys. All I know is that they do. I'll make a call to Lazard and he'll grab a squad of SOLDIERs and get 'em down here to patrol. They'll sniff him out and make the little shithead pay. This isn't Turk business, and that sure as fuck shouldn't have happened to Cissnei. They'll fix her up, though. Don't worry, okay?"

Elena nodded. "Okay. Thank you."

"You guys go back to HQ. See about Cissnei," Vincent ordered, standing up. "Where you goin', sweetheart?"

Aerith took a few moments to respond to the condescending name. "Home."

"No, you're not. Bein' around a clone ain't good for unborn babies and your place is contaminated. You're not even goin' back in there for clothes, I want you outta here."

Aerith grabbed the armrests of her chair, planting herself. "I am not a Shin-Ra worker beneath you, you can't order me around!"

"Yeah? I can order him around," Vincent smiled. "Tseng, take her to Fair's place."

"I don't have keys to his apartment!" She objected.

Vincent scowled, "You don't have keys to your fuckin' baby daddy's apartment? You need to work on that shit, girl."

Aerith growled, "I can take care of myself."

Vincent ignored her. "Tseng, take her to your place for the night. We'll get ahold of Fair and get him back here in the mornin'."

Tseng's face went pink, and he looked like he wanted to argue, but didn't. "... Alright."

"Get outta here." Vincent made a shooing motion, and reached down to jiggle Elena's chair. He watched the three of them get into Tseng's car, saw that everyone buckled up, and watched until he saw the lights of the car take an exit towards the highway.

Vincent saw the sad, dark cathedral looming down the street. He lit a new cigarette and strolled towards it. It was rather spooky inside, but he fearlessly walked through the entire place, looking for any signs that someone was still there. He then went back outside and tracked the chase and the altercation, complete with footprints, scuff marks, bullet casings and blood splatter.

It was silent. Vincent knew he was being watched by dozens of pairs of eyes.

The scene had driven the locals inside, slum dwellers were used to scattering at the sound of gunshots and the sight of Turks. One thing that someone from the slums wouldn't hide from was a kid. If the clone was smart, it could be blending in at a shelter, hiding out at a playground, or squatting in a foreclosed home. It was hard to find anyone in the slums, there was an infinite number of ways to hide.

Finding someone downtown took the kind of door-bashing, street stomping, patrolling kind of search that SOLDIERs excelled at. Vincent almost wished he did spot him, though. He'd heard of kid clones, but he'd never seen one in person. Vincent wasn't sure how he'd react.

His phone vibrated. He looked down at a text from Lazard with a sigh. It wasn't just a threat looming on the horizon - he and the great General Sephiroth were indeed going back up to the Northern Crater together to assist investigation into the break in and the murders.

That was an entire other issue. It never ended.

Vincent stepped on his cigarette and made his way back to his car.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

With a deep snort, Cloud pushed up off the mattress and stumbled to the bathroom. His eyes were hardly open, but he managed to tinkle with morning wood and without getting it all over the toilet seat. He then quickly brushed his teeth, but didn't bother with any additional grooming. He just wanted to surprise Sephiroth with a morning make out before getting some more sleep.

Cloud frowned as he returned to the bed to realize that it was empty, and rolled his eyes at the clock. It was barely six in the morning.

"Seph? You already up?" he called, clearing the sleep out of his eyes. When there was no response, Cloud wandered out into the hallway.

The door to Sephiroth's office was open. Sephiroth refused to actually call it an office because he was way too cool to have one at home, but they used it together on weekends when there were homework or papers to be done. He often used the desktop computer while Sephiroth used his laptop, and they both caught up on work side by side. Cloud's papers always got done quickly and better with the General's long legs draped over his lap.

"Seph?" Cloud peeked into the office.

Like any true professional, Sephiroth was fast asleep on his desk. His arms were crossed on the table, supporting a boyishly dreamy expression with his lips slightly parted. He was only wearing a pair of boxer briefs, but the crowning cuteness to this display was a messy silver bun piled on top of his head.

"Hey..." Cloud approached him with a smile, rubbing a hand over his broad back to gently awaken him. "Come back to bed."

"... I haven't been to bed, yet."

"Poor dear," Cloud tsked, pressing sloppy kisses against his shoulder and up his neck. "Isn't being in bed with me more comfortable than sleeping here?"

Sephiroth yawned and shifted in his chair to sit up, "I just dozed off for just a couple minutes."

"You have a lot to work on?" Cloud asked, smiling at Sephiroth's recklessly thrown together bun. He began to gently unravel the silver mess without pulling too much.

"There was some stuff I had to get submitted at the last minute," Sephiroth leaned back to look at Cloud as he worked on his hair. "... I like this. You should move in with me."

"As if you have a choice?" Cloud laughed, brushing Sephiroth's hair out of his face and placed several kisses on his forehead and nose. He then pulled back to gaze down at him, a serious expression darkening his face. "... Come to bed and fuck me."

"... Yeah. One sec," Sephiroth rumbled, craning his neck farther to catch a few of those kisses before sitting up straight. "Just gotta finish this, then I'm yours for the day."

"Something top secret and important?" Cloud asked, bending over to take a look at the computer screen and read as much as he could. "... You're going to the Northern Crater again?"

Sephiroth's hand shot up to cover the screen. "Don't snoop. What'd I tell you about that?"

"I can't help it!" Cloud spun around to lean against the desk, and focused on Sephiroth instead of the screen. It wasn't hard to do, when he was sleepy and rough around the edges, it only enhanced his beauty. He reached out to run his fingers through Sephiroth's fringe. "Why do you have to go back up north again?"

"More base inspection shit."

"Why?"

There was a murderous spy on the loose, but he couldn't tell Cloud that. He couldn't even tell Genesis or Angeal that. Sephiroth attempted to throw Cloud off from asking a million questions with a piece of information that he knew would interest him more than mission details: "Vincent's comin' with me."

As predicted, Cloud lit up with joy. "Oh good! Is that what he came to talk to you about yesterday?"

"Yeah, actually." Sephiroth let out a long yawn. "He told me maybe we'd be goin' up again. Then I got a call last night sayin' definitely. It's stupid but I gotta do it."

"It's the worst place in the world," Cloud sympathized, then tried to inquire casually and impartially, "...How long will you two be gone?"

"Nine days, maybe less. They initially wanted to set me up for a whole month -"

"A month?" Cloud wailed. "Why so long? It'd nearly be Christmas by the time you got ba – "

"Shut up," Sephiroth reached back to smother Cloud's face. "What did I just tell you? Nine days."

"No more than that, right?" Cloud fretted.

"Quit askin' me questions, I'm tired."

"I know this great place just down the hall," Cloud began to quickly roll Sephiroth's chair towards the door. "And if your nuts are going to freeze for nine days, I'm going to do all I can to warm them up."

"Lemme finish my mission statement, I literally just have to click 'submit'," Sephiroth promised, dragging his feet along the floor to slow progress. "Push me back over there."

"I'm dragging you to bed!" Cloud insisted. "Like a caveman!"

"You can be a caveman all you want after I submit."

"Ugh, make it quick..." Cloud relented and wheeled Sephiroth back.

Sephiroth quickly typed for a few more moments, and then clicked once with his mouse before turning off the monitor. He then stood up to his full height and looked down at Cloud. "Was there somethin' you wanted?"

"You," Cloud bent his knees and hoisted Sephiroth up. He laughed as Sephiroth's feet left the floor and the tall man flailed a bit to try and seek balance.

Sephiroth never quite knew what to do with his arms when Cloud decided it was time to pick him up, so he folded them on top of Cloud's head. "You were hurt yesterday, stupid. Put me down."

"C-caveman..." Cloud wheezed before trotting towards the bedroom. Most of Sephiroth slipped out of his arms on the way there, until Cloud was basically just pushing him along. He then shoved him onto the bed before hopping on top of him.

Sephiroth's eyes lidded. "... You shouldn'ta done that."

"I'm better," Cloud purred as he closed his mouth over Sephiroth's in an unexpectedly deep kiss. He slid his arms beneath Sephiroth's neck, comfortably settled on his broad chest and enjoying his warm, plush lips. He rubbed his tongue against the crack in Sephiroth's bottom lip with a content sigh, fully enjoying an unhurried moment kissing his beloved.

Sephiroth enjoyed the feeling of Cloud enveloping him with his limbs and having his way with his mouth. He gathered Cloud's soft hair in both hands, and used it to tilt Cloud's head slightly for a deeper kiss. After a few more sensual passes of Cloud's sweet tongue, Sephiroth finally pulled away. "Hey. You feel okay? Don't hurt anywhere?"

"I feel fine," Cloud nodded, the longest piece of his hair escaping Sephiroth's fingers and tickling against his cheek. Cloud tilted his head slightly to brush it along Sephiroth's jaw and across his chin. "So, besides being pissed at me for eating one stupid pot cookie, what's your feeling about this weekend?"

Sephiroth parted his lips to catch that little bit of blonde hair between them as he searched for the proper response. Cloud was the most important person to him, and Sephiroth felt like he deserved to hear something better than that he was merely proud. That was something an instructor would say, and it felt every bit as generic as 'I value you' did when he was too chicken shit to talk about love.

But sometimes speaking in simple, generalized terms was the most effective way to communicate. The word love was so bland to Sephiroth, but Cloud always reacted to it with hunger to hear it again. Maybe he'd react the same way to a warm pat on the back?

Sephiroth wasn't sure, but the longer he spent groping for words, the wider Cloud's eyes became in anticipation. Although he felt like an idiot saying this to Cloud's face, Sephiroth puffed that long piece of blonde hair out of his mouth to finally just say, "I'm kinda jealous."

Cloud almost looked upset, but the troubled look slowly bloomed into a wide smile of disbelief. "What? Why?"

Sephiroth swallowed, not even realizing the scope of his own pride in his partner's emerging abilities. He knew exactly how many challenges Cloud faced everyday as a small built man, and just how hard he was working his ass off to overcome it. He didn't have fucked up genetics or a team of scientists tweaking his DNA to become what he wanted to be, he just hopped into some tight fatigues and went for it. Sephiroth was humbled by how wrong he'd been in every private, negative assessment he'd made about his boyfriend's capabilities.

Cloud had the freedom and the drive to be anything he wanted. In some ways, Sephiroth felt trapped by his position and by Shin-Ra. He'd often wondered how long he could possibly keep it up. But there'd be no place else he'd rather be if Cloud was going to succeed in SOLDIER and really be with him for the long run.

He buried a hand in the back of Cloud's hair and pulled him down for another kiss. He wanted Cloud to taste how much he was adored, and put that thought and feeling into every push of his tongue and bite of his lips.

Their kiss waned down into soft pecks, and Sephiroth finally pulled away with a smile. "... I'm excited about you. You broke a limit. That's unbelievable."

Cloud hid his blushing face against Sephiroth's neck. "It's not that big of a deal!"

"It is, though. I've never done it before... what's it feel like?" Sephiroth indulged, running his hands over Cloud's smooth back. "I never asked anyone that."

"Why not?"

"Seemed gay to ask."

"Well..." Cloud giggled, licking his lips in thought as he lifted his head. "I guess it felt like I was drunk, coming, hearing a new favorite song for the first time, screaming at the top of my lungs... all at once. With no warning at all. In fact, right before it happened, I felt like absolute shit."

"Angeal said you handled it good."

"I didn't know what I was doing at the time."

"Did your form change?" Sephiroth wondered. "I forgot to ask Angeal if you actually shifted."

"This is gonna sound stupid... but I swear I was taller for a few seconds. Just a little."

Sephiroth cupped Cloud's hips, and playfully snapped the waistband of his sweatpants. "What's it feel like, knowin' you're gonna do that again? And build on it to bust even greater limits?"

Cloud let out a rush of breath before covering his mouth with both hands. He stared down at Sephiroth for a few moments before slowly removing them to speak. "It makes everything real, doesn't it? I've always felt like I've barely scraped by in school... and now my training is starting to pay off a little bit. I mean, a limit break isn't a huge deal, but -"

"A limit break is a huge deal," Sephiroth said sternly as his fingers quit playing with Cloud's pants to grip his waist. "Do you know how many SOLDIER's lives are saved by a limit break? It's your body's way of basically not dyin'."

Cloud made a wonderstruck little noise, utterly humiliated by this amount of praise. "B-but... what if I can't do it again?"

Sephiroth reached up with a bear swipe and delivered a rough whack to the side of Cloud's head.

"Oy!" Cloud cried out in shock. "What the hell was that for?"

"Movin' you along to the next limit."

"You're not allowed to touch me like that! You're interfering with my training - SEPH!" Cloud screamed bloody murder as Sephiroth thrust his hands up under his armpits from below. For a few frantic moments they went after each other, wrestling across the bed and halfway onto the floor.

"Sephiroth! Seph - STOP!" Cloud shrieked with laughter, both trying to defend himself and to attack. "I'll fucking pee!"

"Aim for my face," Sephiroth commanded between his teeth, and then let out a little keening growl as Cloud finally landed a few wriggling fingers against his ribs, and nailed an elusive tickle spot. It made Sephiroth retaliate all the more ferociously.

"You win, you win!" Cloud finally declared, spreading his palms wide in the air and leaving himself defenseless. "I surrender."

"Good," Sephiroth's hands hovered over Cloud's hips for a moment, before they delved into Cloud's loose borrowed sweatpants and tucked the waistband under his cock. It was stiff and rosy, and bounced a bit as if grateful to be free.

"Get back up here," Cloud smiled, pulling his lover back up onto the mattress. He gave a kittenish growl as he reached between their bodies to slip his fingers past the tight fitting band of Sephiroth's underwear. He pressed his palm against Sephiroth's cock and felt a surprising amount of slick moisture drooling from the tip. There was nothing he liked better than having such a physical effect on Sephiroth's body.

Cloud brought his hand back up out of Sephiroth's boxer briefs to lick the salty precome off his fingers. "You like play fighting, don't you?"

"Who's playin?" Sephiroth asked, pushing Cloud off his lap and onto his back. "Get these fuckin' pants off."

Cloud had his sweatpants removed in one swift motion. Sephiroth had his underwear kicked over the side of the bed in even less time, and didn't give Cloud a chance to feel the autumn chill in the room before he flipped him over onto his stomach. Sephiroth was already straddling Cloud's legs from behind when he paused to kiss the side of his face. "Like this okay?"

"I love it," Cloud smiled, arching his ass up against Sephiroth's groin.

"Good," Sephiroth asked, kissing the back of Cloud's neck and up to his ears. "You want me to ride your hot little ass just like this?"

"Yes..." Cloud lifted his ass up as his ankles snaked around Sephiroth's calves to hold him in place.

Sephiroth was always rougher in this position, and skipped the romance to beat him face first into the mattress. Cloud was definitely in that kind of mood, and he hummed in agreement as Sephiroth pinned him down and pressed heavily against his back.

"Gimme a second," Sephiroth kissed a trail down the side of Cloud's neck, and ended it with a little bite against his shoulder. Sephiroth dropped onto his side to reach out for the bedside table sexy-times drawer. It used to hold boring things like mission files, corporate newsletters, paperwork, and maybe something to write with.

Since Cloud had entered his life, this drawer held things like lube, their Boyfriend, packages of pop rocks (which were strictly Cloud's thing) and the awkward porn Cloud had given him for Christmas.

Completely outstretched, he felt around in the drawer and threw a few things out of the way before snatching an almost empty tube of Pleasureglide.

Cloud laid passive and still, waiting in erotic apprehension for rough hands to handle him. He was surprised when Sephiroth reached around him to lift his head off the sheets, and slid a cool pillow under his cheek. He nuzzled against it, making himself comfortable. "Thank you."

"Welcome," Sephiroth answered with a sharp smack to both of Cloud's ass cheeks. He then dripped a bit of lubricant into his palm before sliding his slick fist over himself a few times.

Cloud's tongue darted between his lips at the sight of Sephiroth's strong, long fingered hands touching himself. He always imagined that watching Sephiroth masturbate would be a heavenly, sensual, graceful affair... even though Cloud knew his boyfriend was the type to bust a nut into a sock and then kick it under the bed to crystallize.

But it was easy to forget all that and picture his lover as a god in moments like these. And being just a greedy mortal, Cloud pressed his knees into the mattress to lift his ass up in invitation.

"Fuck yes," It came out as an accusation as Sephiroth smacked the entire thing with two wide spread out palms. Sephiroth slid his wet cock between Cloud's ass cheeks, pushing his weeping head against the tiny indent of Cloud's tailbone. He shuddered in desire to be buried that deep inside his lover's tight body. "This kills me. You have such a hot ass, baby."

Cloud snorted the compliment away. "You said that twenty pounds ago."

"I meant it twenty pounds ago. I'll mean it twenty pounds from now, too... doesn't matter what you weigh, this ass makes me fuckin' angry," He continued to squeeze the perfectly round, soft ass cheeks as he pulled his groin away and sat down on his calves behind Cloud. He was tongue-distance away, but paused to take a good look at it up close.

Cloud tried not to clench, but it was hard to remain still with his boyfriend's breath puffing warm against his hole. "Seph..."

"I like these tiny, tiny blonde hairs you got on your butt cheeks," Sephiroth observed, ghosting his thumb over Cloud's tight hole to create a rush of goose bumps that caused them to stand up.

Cloud huffed, wriggling in anticipation as Sephiroth's fingers continued to trace gently between his cheeks. "C'mon... don't tease!"

"Tease? I'm not teasin' you," Sephiroth denied, staring up at Cloud as he ran the tip of his tongue gently around the pink, puckered edge of Cloud's hole before he pushed it in deep. He held Cloud's thighs in place with both hands, keeping him still and in the perfect position to get tongue fucked.

"Ung! Seph... god that feels..." Cloud muttered, gripping onto the edges of his pillow.

Sephiroth smiled as Cloud managed to arch up even higher, and continued to make shocked little noises as he lavished his hole with wet kisses. Sephiroth then ran his tongue over the back of Cloud's balls, giving a little attention to both in turn. His mouth watered at how hot and full they were against his tongue, and then he sucked them both into his mouth at once.

Cloud's spine suddenly arched the opposite way like a startled cat. "SEPH! That really tickles!"

"Sorry," Sephiroth chuckled against Cloud's warm, moist skin. He then pulled Cloud's cock back between his legs just enough to turn his head and suck the salty moisture off the tip. He let his tongue play over the hard little ridge surrounding his head, feeling it weep against his lips as Cloud fought not to thrust down against Sephiroth's teeth.

Cloud let out a slightly high pitched whine as he felt those crazy sharp fangs scrape against him, not because Sephiroth would ever do such a thing on purpose, but at the odd angle it was unavoidable.

Getting pleasure from Sephiroth always involved a little pain, and Cloud became curious. He moved his hips a little, experimentally bumping himself against those dangerous little points lining the heaven inside Sephiroth's mouth.

Sephiroth let Cloud's long cock slip free before he spread his cheeks apart and thrust his tongue back in one more time, enjoying every taste his lover's lower body made all at once. His face was surrounded by Cloud's pretty ass, and he breathed in against the soft, smooth skin of his lower back.

Sephiroth wasn't patient enough for much more than that, and went up tall on his knees. He thrust a couple of fingers into Cloud, taking a moment to make some room before he lined up the head of his cock. "Take a breath."

Cloud did. Upon his exhale, Sephiroth buried himself halfway in.

"Fuck! Wait a second!" Cloud hissed, his back curved up as he dug his forehead into the pillow.

"Sorry..." Sephiroth whispered, licking the side of his mouth. Just to remind himself of how delicate he needed to be, he added, "I didn't mean to hurtcha, baby."

"It doesn't hurt that bad. Just gotta get it together..." Cloud spoke against the pillow, his teeth gnawing slightly as he tried to will himself to relax. Sometimes he hardly needed prep at all, but then other times his body wouldn't listen to him. It seemed like the more he wanted Sephiroth, the harder it was for his body to open up and accept the intrusion.

Cloud relaxed enough to let Sephiroth slide in deeper, only to slam down on the brakes again. It was so hard not to move against that teasing clamp of hot muscle, so Sephiroth distracted himself by making his hands heavy on Cloud's back, and digging his fingertips over the narrow plane of smooth skin.

"Sorry," Cloud said glumly from the pillow.

"It's okay," Sephiroth told him, rubbing away the tension collecting between Cloud's shoulder blades.

Cloud reached back to search for Sephiroth's hand, and when he found one he laced their fingers tight. "I just need one more second."

"We have all day. You're awright."

"I love you."

"Love you, too. Still gonna fuck your ass, though."

Cloud laughed on deep breath. "Will you come closer?"

Sephiroth went down to his hands, his chest resting against Cloud's shoulder blades. "Like this?"

"Perfect." Cloud smiled, gently bumping his head against Sephiroth's. "Mm, I can feel you... shaking."

"Little bit..." Sephiroth's eyes rolled shut and his shoulders tensed, utterly pushed to the limits of self- control as he slowly worked his way further into his tight boyfriend. His painfully hard cock was sinking at the only agonizingly slow pace that Cloud's snug ass would allow.

Cloud smiled as he felt Sephiroth begin to sweat behind him. "... You wanna just let go and fuck me hard, don't you?"

"Yeah," Sephiroth answered with surprising innocence, his eyes clenched tight against Cloud's neck.

"Seph," Cloud let out a breath, and a tiny moan came flying out with it as he reached back to pull on his ass cheeks.

Sephiroth didn't think he'd ever get tired of seeing Cloud reaching back to pull his ass open. He looked down between their bodies to catch the erotic sight of himself partially buried between those perfect, round cheeks. "You look so good right now, baby."

"Do I?" Cloud asked, raising his head as though he might catch a glimpse. All he saw was Sephiroth's muscular hips slanted towards his ass, and the rest of his long body hovering close behind him. It was overwhelming how much he wanted that man to use him, and he dug his fingers into his ass to pull himself open wider. "Fuck me, I want it all. Don't stop until you're all the way in."

Sephiroth answered his request with a sharp thrust of his hips, and cupped Cloud's neck when he cried out in shock. He steadily pushed his way in until he reached that particular point where Cloud's ass quit resisting and swallowed his cock the rest of the way down. It was always such a shocking feeling, like Cloud's body was relieved to be near him again and hugging him from the inside.

Once he was buried all the way in, Sephiroth paused to kiss his open mouth. "You okay?"

"More lube," Cloud panted, his hands still holding his ass wide open. "Like, a lot of lube. Please?"

Sephiroth pulled out and drizzled a good amount on his cock before eagerly lining himself back up and squeezing back inside. He worked the lube deeper with every push and pull, and gradually Cloud relaxed enough that Sephiroth was able to establish a slow, gentle rhythm.

The tough part was over. Cloud's fingers eased off of his ass with a grateful sight, and he closed his eyes to focus on his favorite feeling in the world. The man Cloud loved most was deep inside him, every long limb was wrapped around him, his hair was strewn all over, and his breath was coming out in hot bursts against the back of his neck. Cloud couldn't look anywhere without seeing part of him, or move at all without touching him. He was drowning in Sephiroth, and it was perfect.

Even though they'd just begun, Cloud felt his lower stomach tighten dangerously. "Seph..."

"That feel good?" Sephiroth asked.

"Yeah," Cloud managed to groan as his hard cock wagged between his legs from the force of Sephiroth's hips hitting him. There was an odd kind of stimulation there, and Cloud peeked down between his legs to see that it was utterly hard and drooling out a puddle onto the clean sheets.

Sephiroth slid his arms underneath Cloud and anchored against him to thrust a bit harder. "… Missed you all weekend, baby."

It was hard to make a reply verbally, but Cloud bumped his head against Sephiroth's affectionately. It'd been the first time in their relationship that he'd actually had an obligation take precedence over spending time with Sephiroth, and the General had reacted with the perfect amount of pouty angst.

Being on the other end was nice for a change.

Cloud shivered as the situation between his legs was becoming unbearable. As tempting as coming right away was, it was nothing compared to how good it could be when Sephiroth was unhinged and wild and twitching hard inside him.

One hard thrust against the mattress was all the contact he needed to come alone, but just wasn't ready to let go. "C... can... you maybe go a little slower?"

Sephiroth pulled out slightly before starting in on a shallower rhythm that massaged Cloud from the inside with agonizing precision.

Cloud pushed back to meet the sensation, then panicked when he felt his thighs begin to tense and his chest flush bright red. After a few moments he cried out, "Ssseph... I think I need a break."

He didn't stop. "What's wrong, gorgeous? You don't wanna come?"

Cloud hissed in annoyance, because Sephiroth could always tell. Popping off right at the start had been Cloud's signature bedroom move, but he wanted to hold off until Sephiroth was right there with him. Maybe he could make Sephiroth climax sooner than expected if he tried. He narrowed his eyes and pushed back, forcing Sephiroth's cock up against his most sensitive inner parts before swallowing it deep. With less direct stimulation, Cloud felt himself calm down and instead focused on working Sephiroth's cock.

Sephiroth followed the slither of Cloud's hips with his hands. "Feel good to fuck me back?"

"Yes, Sir..." Cloud nodded, throwing a dirty smile over his shoulder. "I like to help."

"C'mon," Sephiroth sat back on his calves and pulled Cloud's hips up, his fingers digging hungrily into his hips to urge him to move. "I wanna see you."

This came so easy to Cloud, and it was the perfect distraction from how hard and impatient his dick was.

Cloud put his weight on his palms, grinding his ass and letting the tip of Sephiroth's cock nuzzle against that perfect spot before he began to slide up and down on his thick length. His movements were smooth and quick, and his ass bounced just a little against the top of Sephiroth's thighs.

"Is this what you wanted to see?" Cloud asked, arching his back until it hurt to give Sephiroth a good view of his cock being ridden. "Am I doing good?"

"Yeah," Sephiroth was breathing deep, utterly baffled by the way Cloud was able to move against his body. His ass was pulling so tight that a little flash of pink lapped out around his cock as Cloud slid up and down. "... I wish I could show you how good this looks."

"It's only for you," Cloud told him. He then let it slip all the way out, teasing Sephiroth with a tiny taste of disappointment. He didn't even have to reach back to reconnect; he found it again and dropped all the way down. Cloud actually felt that one go up his spine, and let out a very un-sexy squeak of a noise. It sprung the General back into action, and he suddenly began to move in a blunt rhythm that forced a grunt out of Cloud with every stroke.

"I'm fuckin' you now," Sephiroth greedily pushed Cloud forward to reclaim position on his knees behind him.

Cloud nodded on a little sob, falling back down onto his elbows and gripping his pillow tight as Sephiroth's sharp, strong hips began to rapidly beat against his ass. "Yes! Seph!"

Sephiroth rubbed a hand up Cloud's narrow back and pinned him down by the back of his neck. "This is what you like?"

"Nng, yes!" Cloud couldn't feel embarrassed about the unbecoming noises he was making, because Sephiroth was clearly enjoying forcing raw reaction from him. He wanted to reply and talk dirty to his beloved, but his teeth wouldn't release his lower lip to speak. Instead he reached back to dig short nails into Sephiroth's thigh, giving him a sharp zip of pain back.

Sephiroth squeezed Cloud's face with one hand, forcing his mouth open before he leaned down to crash against his lips in a hard kiss. The harder he fucked Cloud, the further forward they scooted on the mattress until eventually Cloud's pillow was bunched up against the wall. Cloud then pushed his hands against it to find his own leverage to roll back into the relentless crash of Sephiroth's hips.

"Yeah, don't stop fuckin' me back," Sephiroth muttered, using his free hand to grab at Cloud's ass as it bounced back against his groin.

"I'm gonna come," Cloud whimpered, his hands curling into fists against the wall. He wanted to jerk his cock, but had a stronger desire to wait for Sephiroth. Nothing was better than coming together, and Cloud looked up at him desperately. "Seph... please. I'm so close."

"Go ahead," Sephiroth murmured encouragingly, his fingers digging roughly into Cloud's lean hips.

"Are you ready?"

"Not yet. Just go, baby."

Cloud beat one fist against the wall in frustration. "No!"

"Just let it go, Cloud."

The soft sound of his name sounded utterly sensual coming off Sephiroth's lips, and he felt his body answer with a sharp spike of arousal. It made his stomach clench, and another shocking tingle forced the precome to continue pumping into a little warm pool beneath him.

Sephiroth felt an internal hugging on his cock, but not the kind that signaled that Cloud actually finished. "Not yet? You still holdin' out on me?"

He wasn't sure if he should call attention to his current condition, because it was awful. The best, most horrifyingly addictive kind of awful. Before he could think too much about it, his mouth opened and he heard himself blurt, "I didn't... I'm almost... I think I might come without touching."

Sephiroth scooped Cloud up into a hug from behind, his hands heavy and greedy as they slid down Cloud's torso to stop short of his pulsing arousal. "You gonna do that for me again?"

Cloud let out a miserable whine, so utterly close to coming that he couldn't stop moving against Sephiroth's cock. "Seph, fuck... Help."

"Anything," Sephiroth agreed readily, rolling his hips against Cloud's ass as deeply as possible. "Tell me what to do, baby. I wanna make you come."

As much as he dreaded the thought of performing this feat, he couldn't help but fall back onto his hands to let Sephiroth continue. Coming without touching was miserable and difficult and painful, but he also wanted it so desperately that tears escaped and wet the pillow that Sephiroth had so thoughtfully given him.

Cloud realized he was begging in the middle of a sentence, " - to me! Please, Seph!"

"I been dyin' to fuck it out of you again," Sephiroth told him on a gust of breath. "Makes me so hard to think about it. I'ma do everything I can."

"No," Cloud whined pitifully, completely disagreeing with his long tirade of begging.

"No? You sure?" Sephiroth asked uncertainly, letting his hips slow down to assess the response.

Cloud immediately let out a strangled cry, "Don't stop!"

Sephiroth obeyed and picked up the pace again, "... You wanna let your pretty ass come for me?"

"No."

Sephiroth thought he knew what Cloud meant, and worked hard to make it happen. Cloud was already pressed against the wall and had nowhere else to go. He moved his hands to cushion his skull, but hardly cared... it felt too good, and Sephiroth knew just what he was fucking doing.

It took time. Sephiroth knew he was at just the right angle, and Cloud was perfectly willing to let him do it, but as the minutes stretched out, he was becoming worried that he might not last to complete the job. Cloud's body was so hot, his little hole was hugging every inch of his cock.

Sephiroth went down on his hands, putting his face near Cloud's to suck his lips into a sharp toothed, stinging kiss. Cloud's tongue lolled against Sephiroth's, and a steady bump of Sephiroth's skull against the wall filled the room. The General obviously wasn't paying attention, and Cloud giggled into the kiss before he grabbed another pillow to shield Sephiroth's head.

They both laughed into each other's mouths, because they really were in the most ridiculous position, all hunched over in a desperate fuck pile, but if they moved they stood the risk of losing that perfect angle.

Cloud reached one hand back grip onto Sephiroth's hard thigh, and urged him just a little faster, pulling and pushing on his leg until the General was fucking him at just the right speed.

"You are... so good," Cloud gasped, and such a heady arousal had him babbling. His dirty talk was simple and embarrassing, but he meant every word. "It feels so good, Seph. I love you so much."

Sephiroth had been keeping himself relatively quiet, but at that small praise he began to make the prettiest, most eager noise Cloud had ever heard. He was breathing quickly against his face, his lips trembling and his tongue soft and unfocused.

Cloud purred, "You're close too, aren't you?"

Sephiroth pulled his mouth away. "No... y... no."

Cloud chewed on his bottom lip, staring at the pained, helpless face Sephiroth was making as he was trying to hold himself off. It made Cloud's balls tighten even more against the slap of Sephiroth's body. "Pretty boy... are you close?"

"No."

"Are you?" Cloud whispered again, his voice curling into a trembling whine. "Tell me you're gonna come, Seph."

Sephiroth's eyebrows turned up for a moment before his expression settled into something more determined. "No."

"Are you going to let... let that big cock come inside me?" Cloud asked, his mouth going wide as he felt the first waves of his own climax approaching, making his thighs shake under Sephiroth's weight.

"Not til..." Sephiroth trailed off, his eyes cracking open to show a glow of determination. He'd been teetering on that edge for what felt like forever, and was finally beginning to elevate into something even more frenzied. His pupils were barely visible, two fine black knife slits in a surging sea of neon green. He grabbed Cloud's forearms and pinned them to the bed, pushing his chest against Cloud's shoulder blades. "... I can hold it forever if I gotta."

Sephiroth's eyes hypnotized Cloud, and they pushed his climax away to somewhere just out of reach yet again. Cloud yelped in frustration as his trapped hands grasped the sheets, "Just touch me! I'll come right now if you touch me!"

"You can come without me touchin'," Sephiroth disagreed, and began beating against his ass so hard it made the entire bed bump up against the wall with each thrust.

"I'm trying! I can't!" Cloud moaned in misery, needing to ejaculate with his entire being but unable to make his body commit to the act. He began to worry that it had been a one-time thing, and that worry only aided in keeping his finish out of reach.

"You can," Sephiroth released Cloud's forearms and yanked him by the neck into a quick, hot kiss. He spoke against his lips, his tongue moving over his piercings as he continued to fuck him deep. "We'll figure out what you need. Wanna get on top like last time?" `

Cloud was barely listening as he moved his tongue against Sephiroth's lips and teeth as he spoke. His body was electrified and his nerves were firing impulses that his groin just couldn't answer. Cloud's hands left the bed, his body instinctively searching for a means to an end, just some way to release the hard coil of tension that had been tormenting his body.

He reached for his neglected cock, but his fingers stopped short at the disappointed expression Sephiroth made. It only flickered across his face for a moment, but it was enough to make Cloud pause and think things through for a moment.

Sure, he was once again trapped in edging hell, but if he just saw it through to the end he knew Sephiroth could make it so worth it. He'd made it this far, after all...

Cloud grinned in disbelief, slapping both hands on the wall and spreading them wide where Sephiroth could see them. "Not yet!"

"You decide that now?" Sephiroth balked, his entire chest and throat tensing as he slowed his hips.

Cloud had to giggle. "Sorry!"

"Nnng fuck, don't laugh right now... Stay still for a sec..." Sephiroth pulled out abruptly with a deep sigh. He tilted his head to the side, cracking his neck and then shaking off his near brush with climax. He took a moment to pull Cloud back to the center of the bed, away from the irritating barrier of the wall.

Cloud sighed, grateful for a little breathing room. "Better."

"Talk to me. Tell me what you need."

"Make me do it. Force it out of me," Cloud gulped, nearly regretting the words as they left his mouth.

Sephiroth made a show of grabbing both of Cloud's arms and folding them behind his back. There was a touch of gentleness due to Cloud's recent injury, but it still made Cloud's mouth water to be pushed into place. Once Cloud's arms were locked and his hips were lifted into the perfect position, Sephiroth shoved back in with enough force that Cloud felt it throughout his entire body.

It was easy to let it go to his head, to imagine for a moment this man was indifferently taking whatever what he wanted from Cloud's body. General Sephiroth was using him exactly how the smallest cadet should be used, and inadvertently forcing out the harshest kind of orgasm. It was so fucking close.

"Fuuuck," Cloud groaned against the pillow, completely caught up in his own little fantasy.

Sephiroth loosened his grip on Cloud's hands to dig his fingers into his waist. This was equally as much torture on him as it was on Cloud, and looking down to where he fucked his ass was almost his undoing.

Cloud's hole was hugging him perfectly, and he knew he had moments before it milked everything from him.

"I'm gonna come," Sephiroth hissed through his clenched jaw.

Cloud didn't know what to ask for. With a roar of frustration, he reached back to bury a hand in Sephiroth's silver hair. Once he'd collected a thick handful of it, he yanked as hard as he could.

Sephiroth's low voice erupted in an inhuman yowl, and that noise was enough to push Cloud over the edge. Cloud buried his face into the pillow and let out a muffled scream as his cock wagged between his legs with the force of Sephiroth's hips. It throbbed hard, letting go of a thick load in shuddering spurts before it ran out smooth in a puddle between his knees.

Sephiroth's hips went still as his entire body went burning hot to the touch. He could feel Sephiroth pulsing inside him, jerking and emptying out as he moaned helplessly against Cloud's cheek. Cloud continued to roll his ass back onto Sephiroth's sensitive cock, as even more fluid came dribbling out of him and onto the sheets.

Sephiroth pulled out, and surprisingly rough hands shoved him over onto his back. Sephiroth slid down and took Cloud's cock down his throat, draining anything he might have had left. He gasped at the ceiling as a series of short, but intense waves of sensation crashed over him, almost like a second climax in and of itself.

Sephiroth pulled away with a lick of his lips, his mouth moving over Cloud's balls and up the lightly tanned, fine-haired expanse of his inner thigh. Cloud had both arms crossed over his head, and peeked out from under them. He couldn't form words, but made a long, soulful little moaning noise that expressed exhaustion, turmoil, and utter satisfaction.

"Tell me about it," Sephiroth agreed, dragging Cloud back to the center of the bed by his legs. He fell on top of him and pressed a soft kiss onto his open mouth. "... I got more for you. You want it?"

"Right now?" Cloud breathlessly giggled on a meandering note. He was always the one demanding more sex, and was delighted to be desired for an encore.

"That okay?" Sephiroth asked, rubbing himself gently against Cloud's slightly reddened ass. "Need a break?"

"Nah, I'll catch up!" Cloud bit down onto a wide smile. He was still riding high on the euphoria of his intense orgasm, and reached out to stroke Sephiroth's cock. It wasn't fully erect, but reacted nicely against his warm, caressing hands.

"Watch out for repetitive wrist motion," Sephiroth warned with a smile.

"Oh... that why you made come without touching?" Cloud guessed.

"Nah, I wasn't really thinkin' about it. Makin' you come without touchin' just makes me feel like a good lay," Sephiroth admitted, and then questioned in earnest. "Am I good?"

Cloud pretended to ponder. "... I guess you're okay."

"What can I do better?" Sephiroth asked in jest, but listened closely for the answer as he settled on top of him and gently pushed his legs back.

"Don't change anything." Cloud grinned in sleepy contentment as Sephiroth's hips pushed against his. He then winced a little as the weight of the General settled on his sore thighs. "... Or you would be perfect if you lost like thirty pounds."

"Never gonna happen," Sephiroth said as he eased up on Cloud, holding his own weight. "You'll have to gain that much and meet me in the middle."

"Deal," Cloud's fingers traced up the corded muscles on Sephiroth's arms, and felt his lover's solid frame shudder a little as he pushed back inside.

It was a slightly softer entry, and it set the tone for a long, drawn out, and far more gentle session. It was a contrast to the hectic first round; a sweet love making that didn't happen too often. Cloud cherished the way Sephiroth's mouth couldn't stop kissing him, and how his warm hands moved over every part of

Cloud's body, providing special attention to the part of him that he'd purposely neglected the first time.

Cloud definitely had a nice cock, and Sephiroth didn't think that just because he was bias. It wasn't a monster, but it was insanely disproportionate to Cloud's small, slim body. It was long and curved up perfectly, and was capped with the cutest little button of a head that Sephiroth had ever seen. It always seemed to be rock fucking hard and ready to twitch out one of Cloud's milky, drooling loads. It was a fun toy.

The more Sephiroth thought about it, the stronger a familiar craving began to burn deep inside of him. He almost ignored it, but there was a sensual glare coming up from underneath Cloud's dark lashes that led Sephiroth to thoughts of switching positions.

"What is it?" Cloud asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet and tinged with a husky, gasping rasp.

"Hm?" Sephiroth answered, lips busy moving across Cloud's smooth jaw.

Cloud took his face and smiled at him up close, and those clear blue eyes could see right through him. "What are you thinking about?"

"You," Sephiroth answered honestly.

"What do you want?" Cloud asked, blunt, bitten nails running down Sephiroth's back. "Let me do something for you. Anything you want."

He immediately paused in between Cloud's legs to press his lower stomach against Cloud's cock. His stomach clenched as it smeared a touch of precome against his heated skin, and he blurted it out, "Fuck me."

"You mean - ?"

"Your dick in me," Sephiroth clarified bluntly, just so Cloud wouldn't misinterpret the request.

Cloud was taken by surprise, and shyly nodded up at him. "Okay! If you want me to..."

"Yeah, c'mon," Sephiroth kissed him, pushing his tongue into Cloud's sweet, warm mouth before he pulled out gently. His body already missed that gripping heat, but was ready for something a little different from Cloud.

Sephiroth stood up on his knees as he reached for the lube, but Cloud snatched it from him and let it drop to the bed next to them. He sat up and kissed Sephiroth's chest, letting his hands drift across the hard lines of Sephiroth's hips and back around to the small, heart shaped little bump of his ass. Sephiroth didn't react to the touch, only watched curiously as Cloud tenderly nibbled on the small points of his nipples.

Cloud kissed his way up the center of Sephiroth's chest and collarbone until he couldn't reach any higher. He then smiled up as his hands ran up between Sephiroth's legs. "Do you like when I kiss you?"

"Sure."

"Act like it, then!" Cloud demanded.

"How?"

"Push your ass up!" Cloud lamented, shaking Sephiroth's hips a little with both hands. "Moan! At least move around a little bit! Act like what I'm doing has any effect on you whatsoever!"

Sephiroth tilted his head with a dubious expression. "I'm not like that."

"Try! Just one time, try to... act like me?"

"Act like you?" Sephiroth glanced over behind himself and attempted to arch out as best he could with his streamlined physique. His butt popped up just slightly. "... This kinda hurts."

"Don't get crazy, just take baby steps!" Cloud giggled, scooting closer to hug him around the waist, then appreciatively resumed feeling the hard little mound of muscle. He gave it a light smack, knowing it'd hurt the palm of his hand more than Sephiroth's ass if he tried to actually hit him.

"You can't compare us like that. Your ass is way nicer than mine," Sephiroth bent over slightly to kiss him, inviting his fingers to probe at his own pace. "You're stuck with it, though."

"Your ass is amazing, and you have no idea how happy I am to be stuck with it," Cloud kneaded it with both hands for a moment, digging his fingers into firm muscle and letting them slip between. "Can you lay down for me?"

Sephiroth did as Cloud asked, and groaned as he settled right into a pattern of cold, wet spots Cloud must have left behind while he'd been getting fucked. He watched with a nose-wrinkled smile as Cloud arranged his long legs to his liking, and placed a kiss against his knee. His back tensed involuntarily as Cloud continued kissing up his thigh, over his cock and down between his legs.

Cloud was a little shy about pushing his tongue directly in, but enjoyed mimicking the flicking tongue movements that Sephiroth so often did it to him. He then slid in a couple of fingers, and was surprised at how easy it was.

He looked up and caught Sephiroth's eyes. "Have you used our Boyfriend lately?..."

"I cheated on him."

"With what?" Cloud yelped, actually a little offended. The three of them had a pretty good thing going, after all.

"Handle of my hairbrush," Sephiroth admitted.

Cloud nearly swallowed his tongue. "WH-where at?"

"The shower... I played around yesterday. I thought maybe we'd end up like this today. Been wantin' it."

"God, that's so hot!" Cloud let out a little feeble cry, his head dropping down against Sephiroth's thigh.

He spread his knees a little wider on the bed, pushing back a little against Cloud's fingers. "I gotta say I prefer our Boyfriend to the brush. And if I had a choice of anything, it'd definitely be you."

"I um... I recently cheated on you and the Boyfriend, too. With something kind of weird."

Sephiroth's smile went wide, "Your roommate?"

Cloud screamed, "How dare you!"

"I saw him again yesterday when I got stuff from your room," Sephiroth folded his arms behind his head and was clearly seeing something behind his eyes. "If you got with him... I wouldn't be mad about it."

Cloud looked at him for a very long time, gathering his words. "I know you think Cam is cute, but he's a disgusting freak. One time he didn't wash his face for nearly a week because he didn't want to rinse away the smell of his girlfriend's twat."

Sephiroth licked the side of his mouth, still tasting Cloud's ass. "I can relate."

Cloud was scandalized. "There's something very wrong with boys from Midgar!"

Sephiroth laughed, grabbing Cloud to squeeze him into a hug. "So tell me what you fucked if it wasn't your nasty roommate."

Cloud returned to the topic with a strained wince, "A magazine."

"Pft. It's not cheatin' to look at a dirty magazine," Sephiroth chuckled.

"I mean like... I rolled up a magazine and made a little tube..." Cloud began to giggle, hiding his face against Sephiroth's firm stomach. "I fucked a magazine."

Sephiroth burst into laughter. "Dry?"

"Yeah. I ripped it to shreds."

Sephiroth looked at Cloud's poor groin, but didn't see any chaffing or paper cuts evident. "What magazine was it?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters a lot!"

"... Midgar Motorbike Trader," Cloud lamented, unable to suppress his giggles as he slid down Sephiroth's body. He closed his eyes and pressed a wet kiss to the underside of Sephiroth's cock.

Sephiroth continued to chuckle, but found that choice ominous. "What were you doin' with that?"

Cloud glanced up. "It was free, they had a stack of them in the cafeteria so I... well I was sitting on the toilet between classes and flipping through it and I was thinking about what it'd be like to have a motorbike. Like I could probably afford one a lot sooner than a car, and parking would be way easier -"

"You're not gettin' a bike."

"Calm down, it was just a thought!" Cloud defended, his hands idly caressing Sephiroth's inner thighs. "And then I was thinking about having a car, or even something like your truck. Which got me thinking about what happened last time we were in the backseat of your truck... and I fucked the magazine."

"No more magazines or brushes," Sephiroth grinned, reaching down to run his fingers through Cloud's spikes. "We got each other. And a dildo."

"I won't tell our Boyfriend you cheated..." Cloud smooched a trail up Sephiroth's stomach to lick his ribs.

Sephiroth raised his arm a little to accommodate the ticklish brush of Cloud's soft lips, full exposing his tattoo in the process. Cloud popped his lips against his nipple, then made his tongue wide and flat to lick the surface of his tattoo. With his lips busy, he reached out for the lube.

Cloud flipped open the tube with his thumb and let it ooze onto Sephiroth's ass, then eased his fingers back inside. Cloud sighed a little as Sephiroth's body squeezed, the searing temperature inside him instantly melting the cool gel into slick, hot liquid that made a tantalizing, moist sound as he slid his fingers in deep before pulling them out.

A master of his own body, Sephiroth had no trouble relaxing for the entry, and didn't make a sound besides the soft pulse of his throat swallowing. He threaded fingers through Cloud's hair as pulled him close for a kiss, breathing deep as he felt Cloud push his thin, long fingers in as far as they would go.

"Turn on your side," Cloud rumbled. His free hand was greedy as it ran over Sephiroth's powerful back and cute, muscular ass, and all the way down over the backs of his long thighs. He savored every inch of Sephiroth's body that he could reach with one hand, while the other worked to make him feel good from the inside.

He was straddling one of Sephiroth's thighs and digging three fingers deep inside him when he finally asked, "Ready?"

"Let's go," Sephiroth purred, watching Cloud's every move with quiet fascination. It was nice to feel so completely adored and taken care of, and Cloud didn't neglect any part of him.

Cloud took himself in hand and rubbed the tip against Sephiroth, teasing gently as he slid the slit of his cock against the lubed up hole. Sephiroth knew what he wanted, and what he was doing as a bottom. He was better than Cloud at everything, even opening his ass up to get fucked... and Cloud was completely okay with being outmatched in that aspect.

Cloud's eyes flicked up to catch Sephiroth's gaze as he pushed his hips forward and sank deep inside.

Sephiroth was quiet, and eerily serious as though he was concentrating on something very important.

Cloud decided to try something, especially since he'd just gotten off and therefore had the luxury of staying power. Their rough sex earlier had been to die for, and he longed to give something similar to Sephiroth.

He put a little more force into it than he had previously, until a steady thwack of Cloud's narrow hips began to beat against Sephiroth's firm ass. His goal was to make it jiggle, but the closest thing he could get from Sephiroth's hard body was a very subtle little bounce of muscle under skin.

He was aware that this was probably new for the General and gasped out, "Is this good?"

Unbeknownst to Cloud, Sephiroth was extremely rough with himself if he was in the mood to play with his ass. But something about not being in control of the pace or the style of the penetration made it so much better than masturbation. Whether Cloud was gentle or as rough as a cadet could be, it felt good. It was the only time in Sephiroth's life that he volunteered himself to be bent for the use of someone else, and it was freely given. He wanted Cloud to feel secure about freely taking it.

But all Sephiroth could say was, "Yeah. It's good."

"... Can I go harder?" Cloud ventured to ask.

"If you want."

Cloud adjusted a little, moving up onto the balls of his feet so that he was squatting against Sephiroth. He was able to fuck him even harder, and held onto Sephiroth's waist for balance as he worked to make him moan.

Really though, all Cloud was doing was exerting himself until he could barely breathe. He gasped for air, and the rush of oxygen making his cock jump inside his beloved as he slid inside his hot, tight ass. "Seph! Mnm!"

Sephiroth opened his eyes, a smile turning the corners of his mouth up. "What?"

Cloud bit his lips, trying not to pant like a dog. "N-nothing."

"... Just sayin' my name?" Sephiroth asked, wiggling back against him a little.

"Ung!" Cloud cried, digging his fingers into Sephiroth's waist. "You feel so good! I wanna... make you feel good too."

"It's all good. Do whatever you want."

Cloud refused to let himself get disappointed by Sephiroth's inability to transform into a nelly bottom for his viewing and listening pleasure. It was hard to think negatively when he was buried inside the most perfect man on the planet. Sephiroth's body looked good under his, and his hair looked so pretty splashed across the bed in silver streams.

Without really thinking about it, Cloud gathered up a handful of Sephiroth's hair. With one hand on his hip and the other buried in shiny silver hair, Cloud was content to thrust away until he was satisfied.

A small sound came from Sephiroth, some mix between a growl and a yelp. "Yeah, pull it."

Cloud tugged experimentally. "Like this?"

"Yank it like you did before," Sephiroth breathed. "S'alright if you rip it out."

"Like this?" Cloud jerked back on his handful of hair hard enough to pull Sephiroth's head up off the pillow, and a flash of palpable heat come off the man.

Any fear he might have had of Sephiroth as a superior and a General and the strongest man in the history of ever was totally gone. Cloud carelessly pulled Sephiroth onto his back by the hair, and shoved his long legs apart, knowing that his flexible partner was able to twist into the most absurd of positions.

He wasn't interested in seeing Sephiroth bend like a pretzel, only enough to be able to see his thick, hard cock and gorgeous face while he fucked him. For once he had the view... and it was so nice to watch Sephiroth's body hug him as he pushed inside.

He caressed Sephiroth's hard cock and began to stroke it relatively in time with his hips. His coordination wasn't the best, not with his hips busy moving, one hand keeping a firm grip on a handful of Sephiroth's hair and the other trying to work his cock. But Cloud made it work, and fell into a rhythm that made his teeth grind.

The General was breathing quietly, but his lips were open into a snarl as his tongue ran over his sharp teeth, his eyes fixed on Cloud's hips as they hit against his ass. His stomach muscles rolled up over and over as his hips met each of Cloud's blunt thrusts, and his hands were gripping the backs of his thighs to keep himself at the perfect angle to receive Cloud. It was nice to be used, even if Cloud couldn't put the kind of force behind it a SOLDIER could.

He'd be able to soon. That thought made Sephiroth's toes bunch a little in anticipation, and he gazed up at Cloud's determined face. "... That's really hot, baby."

"Yeah?" Cloud whispered, and it was so hard not to bust right inside him at that very moment. He clenched down on the urge and collected himself, and opened his eyes to meet Sephiroth's. "I want you to think about me like this. Like when you're alone... think of me fucking you."

"I already do," Sephiroth ran his hands over Cloud's thighs, squeezing to appreciate the shapely bit of muscle they'd gained.

He didn't want it to be over, but couldn't help when his groin began to tighten and pulse with a need to release again, this time deep inside a burning hot, slick, tight ass. Cloud looked down at it, watching his wet cock move inside Sephiroth. He couldn't make his firm ass bounce, but Cloud was stricken by the sight of Sephiroth's tight balls bouncing inside the slightly looser skin of his sac. He ran the palm of his hand over them, rolling them affectionately before he resumed twisting his fist around the rock hard length of Sephiroth's cock.

"I'm almost," Cloud warned, unable to help himself as he nuzzled deep inside his boyfriend before picking up the pace again, his hips swinging desperately between Sephiroth's raised legs. "Fuck, I'm sorry. I can't stop."

"Don't stop. Don't be sorry. I want it," Sephiroth told him softly, his hands joining Cloud's on his groin. "Lemme feel it."

Cloud released his hold on Sephiroth's cock and gripped onto his thighs to hold him in place. He wanted to do it all for Sephiroth, but figured the General could finish himself more efficiently than he could, because his mind was racing and he was utterly distracted by the nearly painful build up. His mouth fell open into a long groan, and he cracked his eyes open to stare down at Sephiroth in the final moments of fucking him.

Sephiroth was watching with a smile, his eyes lidded as he jerked himself and enjoyed the feeling of Cloud so desperately hard inside him. "C'mon, baby."

"Seph!" Cloud couldn't contain a harsh snarl as the pressure snapped and he felt himself spill out.

Sephiroth tightened around him, milking every hard shuddering spurt out of his little lover and adoring the play of emotion over his pretty little doll face while it was wrung out of him.

"Pull out. But don't move." Sephiroth ordered.

"I'm... still coming," Cloud gasped.

"Good." He gritted his teeth slightly, watching Cloud's lower stomach muscles throb between his legs. "Pull out now."

Cloud obeyed. Sephiroth's fingers stretched to wrap around Cloud's soaked cock, pressing it against his own to jerk them both together. Cloud shared a small smile with Sephiroth, and shivered uncontrollably as another string of his semen spat across Sephiroth's fist to land in his silver pubic hair.

Sephiroth's hips were twitching slightly, and the movements of his fist became quick and focused as he neared his climax. He wasn't specifically asked to, but Cloud pushed two fingers into Sephiroth's tight ass and gently moved within him to massage him from the inside.

"Fuck that's good," Sephiroth hissed.

"Let me swallow it," Cloud gasped without thinking.

"Go down," He groaned between his teeth, released his grip on Cloud and dug the pad of his thumb against the tip of his cock to buy a couple more seconds. "Fuck, I'm there..."

Cloud eagerly slid down his lover's body. He got the first spurt across his cheek, and barely managed to fit his lips around the blushed tip of Sephiroth's cock before the rest was shooting down his throat. It was always a shocking feeling, but he swallowed it all happily as Sephiroth's hips writhed beneath him.

His lips slurped around it his twitching cock, accepting it deeper as Sephiroth shoved his head down until his lips hit sticky pubes.

He sucked gently as Sephiroth's hands guided his head up and down, until they finally urged him off. He was a little light headed and overly stimulated, and collapsed in a little pile on the bed beside Sephiroth.

They'd both transcended reality, reaching a sacred place where shame and mess held no consequence and they were free. It was a happy place, and it took several long moments to tether back into their bodies.

After a few moments of catching his breath, Cloud propped his chin up to admire Sephiroth up close. "...I love you."

"Love you," Sephiroth answered softly with his eyes closed.

Cloud smiled, spinning his finger through a piece of Sephiroth's hair. He curled it around and around, all the way up to Sephiroth's scalp before letting it unwind. "Being close to you feels like I'm recharging my batteries. I'll be strong enough to go back to school tomorrow."

"Not if we don't eat."

"Order me a large pizza this time, I can finish it."

"No pizza place is open this early. And I don't want pizza, anyways."

Cloud emitted a very genuine gasp. "What?"

"I don't want pizza. Cook me somethin'."

"I bet there's not a damn thing in your fridge," Cloud complained.

"There's not. We need to go to the store."

"You fucked me to death! I can't go anywhere in this condition!"

"I put in time on bottom, too." Sephiroth grinned, opening his eyes. "So I finally have some leverage in this fucked up relationship. And as the most recent bottom, I want you to make me cottage pie and cake pops."

"You can't make demands like that for bottoming six minutes!" Cloud wailed.

"Don't sell yourself short, it was at least nine minutes."

"Whatever! You've got a lot of miles to go before your ass catches up with mine."

"I wonder how hard it'd be to figure out the mathematics behind how many miles I've fucked you."

Cloud giggled with Sephiroth for a few moments before shot up onto his elbows and retrieved his cell phone and began poking at the calculator. "We need some paper!"

When they arrived at the answer, Sephiroth was happy to walk to the store by himself to retrieve the necessary groceries. When he got back, he cooked lunch for Cloud for the first time.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

CHAPTER PICS

1 – owmyhearteries dot deviantart dot com / art / Blonde-Ambition-Chapter-31-Tickle-470549074

2 – owmyhearteries dot deviantart dot com / art / Blonde-Apologies-470549642

A/N

1 – I Tarantino'd this chapter and the last one a little bit, I'm sorry. Basically this chapter and the last one are a two day span. Baby Seph went to Aerith's church on Sunday morning, Cloud ate shit at the seminar on Sunday afternoon, Cissnei ate shit on Sunday night, and Seph and Cloud fucked all Monday morning. Just wanted to clarify in case anyone got confused about the timeline of events.

2 – So, it's been almost a YEAR. I apologize for the hiatus, it happened for all the usual reasons. School, work, other work, mental illness, a broken heart, ennui, alcoholism, existential crisis, etc. Would you believe me if I told you that I open up the Word document almost daily? It's dear to my heart. I would just hate to post crap that I'm not crazy about in order to just post SOMETHING.

3 – The Turks have been sponsored in part by the film Reservoir Dogs.

4 – If Sephiroth's dick is approx. 9 inches long, 18 inches would be one complete thrust, and if there's APPROX 63000 inches in a mile, that's 3500 thrusts per mile. That being said, if they fuck approx. 3 times a week at an avg of 30 minutes per session, that's 90 minutes of fucking a week times 52 weeks, that's 4680 minutes of fucking. If Sephiroth fucks Cloud at an avg of 30 thrusts per minute, that's 140400 thrusts. Divided by 3500 thrusts per mile, that'd be approx. 40 miles.

5 - This is a very, very low estimate that doesn't account for anniversary sex, times that Sephiroth lasted over an hour, the 2 weeks during summer where they fucked several times a day. But it also doesn't account for all the time Cloud spent on top, which would be generally slower, and the fact that they spent nearly 4 months apart. So I'm comfortable with my estimate of 40 miles and am prepared to defend it TO THE DEATH.


	32. Sephiroth's Problem

No child in their right mind would spend time in the rusted out junkyard that passed for a public playground in the slums, and so the clone was able to hide in a tubular slide without being discovered. He'd been shot a couple of times, but after digging out the bullets his wounds healed decently on their own. He'd also been mother fucking _electrocuted_ by Aerith _,_ but after shaking for a few hours and spitting up an ashy version of blood, he was feeling better.

He was aching, tired, cold and starving – but he was feeling better.

He'd only slipped out in search of food once, and it resulted in the quick deaths of four overly concerned citizens who wanted to assist a charred little boy with blood all over his clothes. Four more murders, and then it was a hasty scuttle back up into the slide.

Sephiroth didn't have a single fiber of suicidal tendency, and neither did his clone… although it would have been much easier just to die than go on living. He had no idea what to do now.

Aerith had betrayed him, and as a result Cissnei had gotten terribly hurt, possibly even lost enough blood to die. It wasn't his fault for tearing her arm off, it was self-defense. What sentient creature on Earth wouldn't fight to the death for their freedom against being returned to the Shin-Ra Medical Labs?

While hiding in the playground, he'd been alone in the freezing cold with his thoughts, and made a series of difficult decisions. He would not go back to the labs alive, that was just a fucking fact.

He'd been stupid to go to Aerith in the first place. But how was he supposed to know she actually had some sort of dumbass secret strength? She seemed like any other skank from the slums who was trying to bag a SOLDIER to take care of her. He didn't know what a Cetra was, but suspected maybe Zack was giving her Mako or training her or something… it was weird, but it was a very small detail lost in the raging, swirling storm of shit his life was turning out to be.

Now that the Turks were looking for him, he would have to continue to kill anyone who tried to interact with him, or anyone who saw him. Especially in the slums, where every citizen turned into a fucking professional bounty hunter when Shin-Ra posted an award for someone's capture.

He would even have to kill Cloud if they were both unfortunate enough to cross paths, because he was the most dangerous person of all. One concerned phone call to General Sephiroth about a sweet little boy who looked just like him would result in biblical fury. He couldn't imagine what Sephiroth would do to him if he knew about a rogue clone who happened to know every minute detail of his life.

What a stupid thing to be.

"I just wanna go to sleep," the little clone wished aloud, his childish voice echoing back at him in the plastic confines of the slide. It was the first thing he'd said out loud in a day, and it felt so good to talk that he whispered again. "Please just lemme wake up and be home."

' _I'll take you home.'_

The clone let a long silence distance himself from the unexpected sound of Jenova's voice in his mind. After a moment the fright of it passed, and the clone buried his face in the soft hood of his bloody, stolen Prada jacket.

' _If you let me help you, I'll take you home.'_

"Nevermind, bye now," the clone laughed aloud to cover up the terror he felt whenever Jenova spoke to him. In this particularly vulnerable state he decided to just run, and gathered his courage to kick and clamor his way down out of the slide.

Unfortunately, a group of teenage boys were all sitting in the rubber gravel around the slide's exit, and seemed just as surprised to see the clone as he was surprised to see them.

The little boy flopped over onto his stomach and scrambled back up into the plastic slide, but it was a futile attempt to turn back time. There came a rapping from the outside, "Hey, kid! We know you're in there!"

The clone kicked back at the area where whomever was outside had knocked. "Fuck off!"

"What are you doin' in there?" Another voice called.

"Just go away!" The clone begged. "Forget you saw me!"

A new voice echoed up the plastic slide, "You a fuckin' narc?"

"Who even says narc? Hey! - " the clone cried out in surprise as two hands reached up the bottom of the slide to drag him out by his feet.

There were six teenage boys in all, and the clone shook his head somberly as they forced him out of the slide and to stand up before them. They were all young, cute, stupid, and terribly unlucky. Most of them didn't look like they even lived below the plate, but probably just thought it was a cool place to make friends and hang out – like Cloud.

One of them grabbed the hood of the clone's jacket. "What are you doin' out so late, kid?"

"You tryna listen to me deal?" A boy who was much older than the rest of them accused, exposing himself as a drug dealer. That was probably why the rest of the boys were hanging out with him in the first place. "You wearin' a wire?"

"No, you stupid asshole! I just wanted to mind my own fuckin' business, but now I'm gonna have to kill all of you!" the little clone shouted. "How do you think that makes _me_ feel?"

The teenage drug dealer didn't comprehend what had just been said to him, and stepped back with a scowl. He lifted his fist but apparently didn't have the heart to hit a child, so he passed the order along the line. "Joey, fuckin' knock this brat out 'til I decide what to do with him."

It wasn't hard to kill civilians, and there was no joy in it. There wasn't even relief after the last one fell into the rubber playground gravel, glittering with broken glass in the streetlights. The clone was seventeen bodies deep into a murder spree. Seventeen bodies and one arm.

"What the fuck am I gonna do?" the clone whispered aloud, dropping back down onto the slide to sit. He considered just staying there until someone found him surrounded by dead teenage boys, and just did him the favor of putting a bullet in his head.

' _Go where I tell you to go.'_

General Sephiroth would never have obeyed anything Jenova instructed him to do. Sephiroth was scared to death of her voice, of her touch, of the way she made him feel. It was the same way clones made him feel… like there was something seriously missing in his life, a connection to family and to others like himself. The clone knew that there was _nothing_ that Sephiroth wanted more, on a human level and on his most fucked up, genetically warped levels. But to Sephiroth's advantage, he had plenty to live for, plenty of opportunity to serve Shin-Ra as a free thinking, independent entity, and plenty of people to build a family with. Sephiroth didn't need Jenova.

The clone didn't have that luxury. If someone in the Universe was willing to help him, even if it was _her_ , he would accept it. She could lead him into some sort of death trap for all the clone cared; he was tired and starving and demoralized to the point of no return.

The clone walked a path on the sidewalk completely free of humans, until he felt a mental tug to stop. It was a small dwelling, a narrow, crooked little house nestled between a larger apartment building and a convenience store. The place was inconspicuous, almost invisible in the bright neon lights of the store and the towering presence of the apartment building. It was handmade, welded together from pieces of plate material than periodically showered onto the slums with often fatal effects.

' _You can rest here.'_

The door to the house was unlocked, and opening it unleashed a foul odor. The doorway led right into the dark living room, where the television was deafeningly loud and being watched by the eyes of a man who obviously had been dead for weeks. He'd been an overweight man, and in death that extra weight had only served as that much more flesh to rot.

The clone groaned aloud at a decaying body slumped in the chair, hooking his shirt up over his nose with an outcry of repulsion, "Great place!"

' _Get rid of the body.'_

"Oh, just get rid of it? Why didn't I think of that?" he grumbled.

' _I hate sarcasm,'_ Jenova told him sharply. _'Your big brother is sarcastic. I hate it.'_

The clone hesitated for a moment at the mention of a brother. "You mean Sephiroth?"

' _Don't be like him.'_

That was a tall order, considering he _was_ Sephiroth. But he supposed he did owe Jenova some gratitude for giving him a place to hide. "… Sorry. I just dunno what to do with a big, dead civilian."

' _Divide him into smaller pieces.'_

The language that Sephiroth and Jenova shared had a strange, simplistic poetry to it. The clone carried out the order with a kitchen knife and a trash bag. It was a task to focus on, and strangely therapeutic to dissect and dispose of something.

It helped him put his thoughts in order.

Cissnei deserved worse than her arm ripped off for trying to take him back to the lab. Same with Elena and Tseng. They knew what the labs were like for a clone… and yet they wouldn't respond to any appeal he'd made to just let him go, to forget they'd met, to forget he'd gone to Aerith's stupid fucking church to seek out a little sanctuary. They had no personal interest in escorting a clone back to the labs. It would have made no difference in their lives to have just forgotten that Aerith called them down. Didn't they have any fucking heart at all?

Of course they didn't. They were Turks. Same with SOLDIERs, who were now surely hunting to kill him and not try to zip tie him and escort him anywhere. SOLDIERs wouldn't ask questions either, they would just shoot on sight and say 'sorry' later if it happened to be the wrong target.

What a funny shift in perspective it was to be an outsider.

The clone threw several bags full of dead guy into the dumpster behind the convenience store, and the stench of death was damn near concealed by the slum filth. After the body was gone, the clone went about dragging the chair it'd been rotting in outside, too. He then found some bleach in the kitchen and went to town to disinfect the place.

There was something almost nostalgic about the sharp musk of heavy cleaners. It reminded him of everything he refused to return to, and he was even more determined to hold onto his freedom and never be taken to the labs alive. Even this ritual of cleaning up a deteriorated and filthy space to live in reminded him of a parallel in his own life; of leaving the labs and finding the loft and making a place of his very own to call home.

There was no daylight below the plate, but it was morning by the time the clone was satisfied with the cleaning. Everything in the dead guy's kitchen was expired or rotten, but he did find some Jell-O cups in the refrigerator, and took them all to the living room where the television was still on. He landed on the couch with a plop, light headed off the fumes of cleaner, and ultimately exhausted as he started to shovel Jell-O into his mouth. He was too exhausted to properly relax without decompressing, and so he flipped through the dead man's television channels until he landed on the Shin-Ra news network.

"It's going to be a beautiful and frosty autumn morning in Midgar!" The department store catalogue model turned broadcast personality was thrilled to announce. "Tonight we're expecting a major snowfall, so make sure to cover up those plants!" Her smiled faded and she became suddenly serious, "City official Gary Miller responds to allegations of using his hands to stimulate his lawyer underneath the table at his recent public hearing concerning spousal support in his recent divorce."

The clone started to cry. It was sudden, but he felt that he'd earned it. "Hey! Miss Jenova? Are you still there?"

It was the first time he'd ever actively reached out to her, and she responded immediately. _'Yes.'_

"I wanna go home!" The clone eagerly bawled to the only fucking thing on planet Earth who gave a shit about him or his problems or his tears. He needed pity. "I'm tired of this, I just wanna go home!'

' _Kill Sephiroth.'_

"I don't need you to tell me that!" the clone blubbered, all composure lost. "But even if I had a chance, he's way too strong!"

' _Weaken him.'_

"I dunno how!" he sniffed, crumpling down to shove his head between his knees. It was pretty easy at his current size and proportion, and he was able to squeeze in on himself and quell the pounding in his head and the queasy ache in his empty stomach.

' _Start with his humans,'_ Jenova advised. _'They're the reason he abandoned us.'_

Sephiroth's humans. The clone winced as his memory replayed the sound Cissnea's arm made when it tore free from the socket. The crunching rip of flesh and bone, her throaty scream of pain, Aerith's high pitched wail of surprise, Tseng shouting her name, and the worst sound of all… Elena's guttural cry of shock at witnessing a limb being torn from her girlfriend.

He'd only been alive for a short while, a newborn in the grand scheme of things. But he'd killed more people already than Sephiroth had in his first two years as a SOLDIER. The number of people he'd killed in Wutai was far lower than most people would expect, because Sephiroth had a certain, unadvertised softness. He felt relieved to show mercy, he always tried to rescue civilians, but the heroic stories told amongst the army were of how Sephiroth would have done anything for his brothers in arms.

Sephiroth's best interests lay in performing well enough for the army to preserve a place outside of the lab. And the clone's interests lay in never getting put there to begin with. They were the same, but attacking life from opposite directions.

"Did you make me?" the clone asked Jenova.

' _Yes, with Sephiroth's help.'_

"Oh gross!" The little boy shouted. "He actually _is_ my dad?"

It took Jenova a heartbeat to understand what he was asking. _'I'm your mother. Sephiroth is dead to us.'_

The clone sighed in bitter resignation because the whole thing was disgusting. Jenova and the clones thought they were all one, and her goal was for them to become one again… whatever that meant. It probably just meant butt fucking. But he decided to just listen to this bullshit until he figured out what he was really going to do.

He lay down on his side with a growl of disdain. "So what the hell'd you make me for?"

' _A second chance to take my son home. You deserve to be raised by your own kind. That was the mistake I made with your brother. He's one of them, now. And when the time of reckoning comes, we'll judge him right along with them.'_

"Or sooner?" The clone added. "I'd really like to get my apartment and my job and my boyfriend back – "

' _You'll break away from those desires. We have work to do… I want you to listen to me carefully, because I'm going to tell you things that I've never told Sephiroth. He would never listen, but you're different. We come from the stars, and our family is waiting for us…'_

He tuned her out immediately. On the Shin-Ra news network, a brief story about a manhunt in the slums held the clone's attention, which he assumed was about himself. Then there was another story about Rufus' upcoming birthday ball. Then another one a six-year project of replacing all the plumbing in Midgar so civilians wouldn't get sick from the tap water anymore.

The clone's attention was fixed on the television until an invisible hand touched the top of his head. He made an effort not to back away from that touch, for the first time not completely recoiling. It was a feminine hand, soft, with something distinctly sharp and claw-like on the edges that scraped against his scalp in a way that was sickeningly pleasurable to a person who needed a little physical comfort at that very moment.

He looked up to the empty space behind him where the owner of that invisible hand might have been. There was only a void and silence, so he gulped. "... What?"

' _You're the only one I've ever made all on my own,'_ she said, a hint of sadness in her slithering voice as it broke through the seductive glaze of television noise. _'You're more a part of us than Sephiroth ever was.'_

"There's no difference between us," the clone muttered indignantly, subtly trying to tilt his head to force her invisible hand to slide off.

' _There's one difference between you and your brother. You're going to be a good boy,'_ a wet purr resounded with the invisible hand becoming heavier on his head. _'That's what I'll call you… my good little boy.'_

In Jenova's language, 'good' simply meant neutrally obedient to one's master's wishes, and 'boy' referred more to reproduction capabilities than to gender. She was calling him a reproductive slave, a stud to use in order to make more clones without scientific interference.

She'd already tricked Sephiroth into it once. He was the result.

' _When you're a big boy, you'll have more than you ever dreamed of. I'll make you a living god. We're going to take this planet for ourselves, and we're going to use it as our vessel to go back home. I'll make you so happy.'_

"That sounds… neat," the clone tried to agree amicably, but inside his stomach was in knots from filthy mental flashes of what she had in mind for his future.

It was subliminal, almost nonsense, shifting bodies and oozing bile and tongues and teeth and appendages that humans didn't have. Sephiroth knew Jenova as a passive, dead piece of chum floating in a tank, but what flashed in the clone's mind was alive, fast moving, and there was a churning, deep sea of creatures just like her. They seemed to be able to live underwater, but writhed on land in a fuck pile that never slowed, was never satisfied, and didn't care about who or what hole it was fucking as long as it was connected to the rest of the group.

That was the common life, and that was far below Jenova. The ruling class was more intelligent, more reserved, but engaged in activities that the clone's Earth-based mind couldn't comprehend. He didn't know what he was looking at, but he could smell it.

Sephiroth and his clone could handle mental grossness, in fact found pleasure in horror movies and gore. But when the smell of it invaded the clone's senses, he felt bile rise in his throat. The reproductive gooey juices, the bodies, the sweat, the fecal matter – it all culminated into the most overpowering, evil odor he'd ever experienced.

"Please stop," the he finally asked. "I'm tired."

' _Does it make you want to touch yourself?'_

He reacted with a cry of outrage, but faked it into a laugh. "Not really."

' _You don't have the right parts, yet…'_ Her claws dug hard into the back of his head. _'When we get home, I'll give you a much better body to use. I'll have a new body as well... we'll do beautiful things together.'_

"Okay!" he squeaked, sucking in a terrified breath before he tried to speak in a calm manner. "I'm… really tired. Sorry. Please lemme go to sleep now."

To his surprise, his appeal worked. The invisible hand lifted off of him, and the air in the house became lighter, less oppressive. Her sweet stench left with her presence, but it was still lingering somewhere above the atmosphere.

When the he was alone again, he felt confusion and rage bubble up underneath his fear and fatigue.

If Jenova was trying to seduce his loneliness into going on some intergalactic road trip to a slimy alien orgy… it was scarily close to working. Was home actually somewhere out in the galaxy where a society of creatures like Jenova waited for them to return and breed with them? What would that place be like? Surely an entire culture had to boast some sort of cuisine, some sort of entertainment, _something_. But from what he'd just seen, his suspicions were true: it was all about butt fucking and throwing up in each other's mouths under the sky of a different color.

Home was on the plate. Home was a place where Cloud's record collection waited for him to move in and fill the loft with music. Home was Shin-Ra HQ, the training floor, the army. Home was pizza, the near constant ache in his left hand, scary movies and the joy of taking off his boots after hours or days of wearing them. It was brewing coffee, listening to movies he'd watched a dozen times, treating blisters and walking around naked and free. Home was safe, and content, and where all bad things were kept far away.

Home was not lying fully clothed on a dead man's couch. It wasn't a constant battle in his mind between finding a way to kill himself and going on living.

When Aerith asked the clone what his name was, that question had shaken his reality to the core. He was not Sephiroth, not anybody, but he wanted the life that Sephiroth had.

If that life didn't exist at all… then the clone didn't want to exist, either. And if Jenova was gunning for Sephiroth and world domination, then maybe _that_ was the clone's true purpose in life: to shut down that entire fucking agenda. Just because his new life sucked, didn't mean the entire planet had to go to shit.

Sephiroth was definitely going to die. But not because Jenova wanted him to.

He could play it cool and ride this out until he figured out how to get rid of her, because he was for damn sure over it. Sephiroth had some medicine at his place that could help keep her out of his mind and her invisible hands off of him, so that was his next goal.

_Weaken him..._ the clone thought, kicking up a leg in victory as it all came together. There was medication right there in Sephiroth's fucking bathroom cabinet that would put him into a coma in minutes, making it easy to kill him. An overdose might even do the entire job without the clone having to do anything but inject it.

Even sneaking into the loft wouldn't be difficult. The clone let out a relieved puff of air as a plan started to come together in his mind. He didn't need anyone to help him solve his problems.

He was about to become Sephiroth's problem.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Cloud, get up," Sephiroth called.

It was four o'clock in the morning. Of course there was no response.

"Cloud," Sephiroth called again, pulling open the shower curtain to glare out. He'd left the bathroom door open, and it gave him the perfect view of the lump his boyfriend formed underneath the blankets. "Get up."

"You can take that tone if you want, but you knew the risks from the start," Cloud announced loudly. "I never guaranteed we'd sell all the aluminum."

Sephiroth wasn't sure if he'd heard that right, but it usually didn't matter. He'd heard more random rambling sleep talk from Cloud than he knew what to do with, but there was no time for it this morning. "Don't make me come over there. Time to get up."

"… Ungff… what?" Cloud's voice croaked out huskily, completely different from the confident sleep talk just moments ago. His rumpled head emerged, and he blinked rapidly as reality came into focus. Upon looking at the clock, he fell back over with a booming groan, "Why are you waking me up so _early_? We set the alarm for four-thirty!"

"What difference does half an hour make?"

"A huge one!" Cloud seethed. "This is the middle of the fucking night!"

"Quit bein' a brat and get in here," Sephiroth commanded, closing the shower curtain.

"I don't even take showers before morning drills, what's the point?" Cloud whined, rolling over onto his stomach under the covers.

"You're covered in dried up jizz."

"I don't care."

"You can't go to school like that."

"WHY NOT?"

"'Cause you're gonna get jizz dandruff all over my truck," Sephiroth growled, getting right down to the root of the problem. "You're bein' fuckin' disgusting and lazy, get in here and take a shower."

"NO!"

Sephiroth jerked the shower curtain open, " _Cloud_!"

Cloud got a dark chill from hearing that barking command in his lover's voice, but was too stubborn to respond to it. He curled in on himself like a dying star, and hoped that Sephiroth would simply forget that he existed.

Sephiroth did not. He marched from the shower and seized all of the blankets, rendering Cloud a defenseless ball of naked limbs. "Get in the goddamn shower, you smell like a fuckin' dirty jockstrap."

"Never!" Cloud uttered with all the drama of a teenager who was being actively denied sleep. "If you love me, you'll love my filth!"

"I'm done playin' witchu," Sephiroth grunted under his breath as he scooped Cloud up, grappling with his obstinate boyfriend's limp, resistant form to get it through the bathroom door. "How do you make yourself so fuckin' heavy when you want to? You weigh nothin'..."

Cloud wailed wordlessly as the bright bathroom lights infiltrated his eyes. He knew he was defeated, but still forced Sephiroth work to get his lifeless body into the tub.

"There!" Sephiroth cried in victory, dropping him on his feet and rudely shoving Cloud's cum-encrusted head right under the water.

The hot water felt good, damn near orgasmic as it hit Cloud's sore shoulders and back, but he refused to give Sephiroth the satisfaction of letting him know. After a moment of sulking under the shower head, he pointed his nose in the air as he moved his wet hair out of his eyes. "Why do you always have to boss me around?"

"Look at yourself."

Cloud could see all the evidence of the previous day's sexual activity peeling off his torso and legs and running down the drain. He sheepishly grabbed the shower gel and began to lather up, "… Okay, you were right. I was dirty."

"Wash your ass," Sephiroth grumbled, going back to work on his hair.

"Wash _your_ ass," Cloud told him with a side eye, as he'd gotten a turn on top himself. He grumpily put one foot up on the edge of the tub and made sure to get in deep between his legs with the lather. He had to giggle a little, and looked up to find Sephiroth grinning back at him. "… I'm not a four o'clock in the morning person."

"I know."

Cloud couldn't resist standing up onto his toes to press a kiss onto Sephiroth's soft, wet lips. "… No matter how early it is and how little sleep you get, you're always ready to go to work like a machine. How can I be like that?"

"You gotta find somethin' worth gettin' up for."

Cloud batted his eyes in romantic expectation. "What was worth getting up so early this morning?"

"You, of course… your smelly ass woke me up out of a dead sleep," Sephiroth explained with a serene expression, going back to work on washing his hair.

It made Cloud laugh, but it was a lie. Sephiroth had suffered from uneasy sleep, and ominous dreams. When he closed his eyes he was on the run from something, but not a monster or anything tangible that he could fight or kill. It was a looming situation, a feeling of unease that crept up into the corners of an ordinary dream and took it over.

Several times he jolted awake to the feeling of Cloud's body curled up behind him. Cloud didn't seem to sense his lover's uneasy sleep, and spent all night pressed against Sephiroth's back as a little version of a big spoon. Sephiroth would normally have switched sleeping positions, but he liked Cloud's body behind him and his slim arm lying territorial across his waist. It was a warm human tether back to reality. He would let the calming sound of Cloud's deep breathing lull him back to sleep, but the unease was still waiting for him the moment he lost consciousness.

Sephiroth decided to just stay up.

He'd wandered around the loft for a while, looking for a distraction until he decided that some training in the VR room would make him feel better. Getting there early was essential, because more SOLDIERs around meant more gawkers, and more guys stopping him to ask him dumbass technique questions. He really just wanted a balls to the wall training session to start his day, and decided to take a bath first. And when he discovered just how fucking much semen had dried up in his hair, he decided to wake Cloud up. Any amount of semen on his body was quadrupled on Cloud's.

Cloud's smile was carefree and lopsided as he took a little shampoo for himself and worked it into his hair before reaching down to wash his pubes. "I bet we'll start to like mornings better once we're roommates. It's like how multiplying two negatives numbers makes a positive!"

Sephiroth's eyes were drawn to the sight of soapy bubbles running down Cloud's lean body, and his hands moving clinically over his tight, tan skin. "… You're never gonna be my fuckin' _roommate_. Don't lemme hear you say that word ever again."

Cloud let out a mock-frightened warble. "Ooh, so we're not roommates… yet you refuse to marry me. You expect me to just live in sin the rest of my life?"

Sephiroth let out a bursting laugh, and it was an unhinged little sound that early in the morning. "Alright already. I promise, someday we'll make it legit."

Cloud would have probably been more affected by that if it hadn't been four in the morning. As it was, he just gave a deep sigh and reached for the shampoo bottle, "I just like to tease you, Seph. I talk about getting married and having kids and shit, but that's all it is. Just talk."

This was an entirely new sentiment coming from Cloud, and Sephiroth was suddenly nervous. He hesitated before asking, "So… if we're not roommates, married, or living in sin, what do you wanna be?"

"Us," Cloud told him mildly as he scratched conditioner into his scalp. "I was talking to my mom, and she sort of made me realize something… I already have everything I want. I was raised by chick flicks and a pack of insane, single mothers and the ultimate goal was always getting married. That's not _us_ though, and I understand that. As much as I like the thought of having kids someday a long time from now, I don't want them at all if you don't want to be their father. I know you're going to think I'm stupid for saying so, but I think you'd be a really great dad. But that's beside the point - if we're each others family, and the rest of our lives is just you and me getting up together and going to work, just like this… what else do I really need?"

Cloud had just reached into Sephiroth's chest and ripped out his beating heart. He didn't even seem to realize it as he turned into the water to rinse his hair, eyes closed and lips tight as he tilted his head back.

Sephiroth tried to say something, but as usual, the correct words couldn't easily rise up from his heart to his mouth without his brain throwing them out as unsuitable. Time to reply elapsed to something awkward, and eventually Cloud moved away from the water.

"Did you make any coffee?" Cloud asked, wiping water off his face as he opened his eyes.

Sephiroth took the chance to run his fingers through Cloud's wet hair, and down to gently clasp the back of his delicate, slim neck as he found the voice to speak. "… Yeah. I put some water in your kettle, too."

Cloud smiled up at him. "Why are you so sweet to me?"

Sephiroth quickly found his footing through sarcasm, "Sweet? Two minutes ago I had to drag you into the shower. You were actin' like I was killin' you."

"Eh," Cloud dismissed his bratty behavior as he slipped his arms around Sephiroth's waist. "You always know what's best for me."

Sephiroth closed in on Cloud, pulling his head and shoulders into a tight, urgent embrace.

Although Sephiroth hadn't verbally responded to his little speech, Cloud could hear the quick pace of his heart. He pushed his cheek against Sephiroth's chest, nuzzling that steady, thudding beat from the outside. He was nearly fluent in how to read Sephiroth's body language, which was always more honest than the words he said. Heavy fingertips rubbing against his scalp, a long hug in strong arms, and the pounding thud of Sephiroth's heart told Cloud that at least his words were well received. That physical reaction was important, because that was the kind of man Sephiroth was.

Sephiroth leaned down to kiss the top of Cloud's head, and then paused. He kissed the top of Cloud's head again, and then put his chin on top of the curve of his skull thoughtfully. "… Hang on a second."

"What?"

"Look up at me," Sephiroth tilted Cloud's chin up, his eyes dancing as he gauged his lover's appearance. "… Holy shit."

"Holy shit _what_?" Cloud gasped, turning his face away. "Did I break out last night? Don't look!"

As a person who struggled with actual skin issues as a teenager and still sometimes as an adult, Sephiroth never saw any evidence of Cloud's so called break-outs. "No dipshit, you got taller."

"Stop it, Seph! That joke is never funny!" Cloud boomed in embarrassment, bumping him away with his hip.

"I'm not fuckin' with you this time," Sephiroth was still pushing on the top of Cloud's head to make sure some of his hair wasn't sticking up to create an illusion. "I think you were actually right about that limit break pushin' a growth spurt."

"… You're not joking?"

"I'm serious."

"Do you have like, a tape measure or something?" Cloud asked, looking up at Sephiroth curiously. He bent his knees a little, trying to see if his view of his beloved had changed. It was hard to tell because he was looking up his nose either way.

Sephiroth stepped out of the shower and dug around in one of the bathroom drawers before pulling out a lengthy strip of cloth measuring tape, "I got this?"

Cloud looked on from the shower in disbelief, as he routinely snooped through Sephiroth's bathroom drawers but never saw that before. "Where'd that come from?"

"I wanted to measure my hair," Sephiroth admitted.

"Why?" Cloud laughed. "How long is it?"

Sephiroth ignored that question. "C'mere."

Cloud dunked his head under the spray until it was fully soaked, and then turned off the water. He stepped out of the shower and onto the bath mat, slicking his hair flat and standing up as tall as he could with a hopeful little smile.

Sephiroth had to smile back. "You're cute."

Cloud's expression dropped. "… If you're fucking with me I'm gonna be so mad."

"I'm not," Sephiroth laughed with his tongue between his teeth.

"Now I _know_ you're fucking with me!"

"Let's make a bet," Sephiroth hummed thoughtfully as he tossed the rolled up strip of measuring cloth back and forth between his hands. "How tall do you think you are?"

"I'm five-five and a half," Cloud mumbled, never pleased to announce this information out loud, especially to someone nearly a foot taller than him.

"If I'm right that you got taller… you gotta do somethin' for me."

"Like what?"

"I dropped my phone and the screen's got a crack."

Cloud gasped in horror, "Oh no!"

"I mean it's still usable, but I've been wantin' a new one forever. I already called the phone people, and they say we can get new ones."

Cloud was on an emotional roller coaster, and was now crying out in supreme joy, "REALLY?! Me too? Awesome!"

"And I'm payin' extra so we don't have to turn in the old phones full of naked pictures."

Cloud had to laugh. "Why don't we just save the pictures on your computer, then delete them off the phones?"

"I can't risk that. They'll find a way to retrieve the pictures, then my naked ass will be everywhere. No turning in the old phones. I gotta destroy them," Sephiroth decided. "Just take my credit card and go take care of it this weekend while I'm at the Crater. Get our new phones, but don't you dare give 'em your old one. Got it?"

Cloud didn't mind being sent on this little errand at all, but Sephiroth was asking as though it was some sort of official mission. "Of course! You don't even have to make a bet with me to get me to do it."

"That wasn't the bet," Sephiroth bit his lower lip as he searched for the right words. He never, ever found them, so he just looked down at his boyfriend's wet, naked body and said what he was thinking. "The new phones we're gettin' are gonna have video recording, and I want you to spend your weekend fillin' mine up with movies of your ass."

"What _ever_!" Cloud cried out, shoving Sephiroth's chest as clarity dawned on him. "You're lucky you even get pictures, I'm not making movies now! I'm not a porn star!"

"You're better," Sephiroth told him honestly.

Cloud was turning red, "There's one hundred million guys on the internet, way better looking than me who are perfectly willing to - "

"You're _better_ ," Sephiroth repeated.

"You're crazy," Cloud accused. "You probably want me to do something depraved and gross, anyways."

"Can't I just watch you play around a little bit? Just doin' whatever it is you do when I'm not here. Even if you miss me, I know it's nice bein' all alone after a long week at school... I bet you spend a lotta time teasin' one out..." A sly grin spread across Sephiroth's mouth when he glanced down to find that Cloud's body was a least a little bit interested in the suggestion. "... I just wanna see you do it. Would you at least think about it for me?"

Cloud worked to not shy away from how quickly his body reacted to a little erotic narrative from those soft lips. He was just so good at it, and it made Cloud flustered. "Okay, fine… If you win and I really did get taller, I'll make _one_ video. But what do _I_ get if you're full of shit?"

"Same thing. What do you wanna see me do?" Sephiroth wondered, almost regretting the question.

A sudden, bright smile lit up Cloud's face, "Would you do something super sensual? Like a bubble bath with you rubbing your hands all over yourself... and maybe playing with your nipples and stuff before jerking off?"

Sephiroth's nose wrinkled, " _That's_ what you wanna see?"

"Yeah!"

Every dirty picture Sephiroth sent Cloud was weighed against the possibility that he would piss him off someday and they'd all be leaked. Video would be a little less forgiving, especially if he was rubbing his nipples in a fucking bubble bath, but the hopeful expression on Cloud's sweet face made him uneasily agree. "Okay, I guess…"

"Deal!" Cloud exclaimed enthusiastically, then held his breath as Sephiroth touched the measuring tape to his forehead.

He seemed to be displeased with the result, and was deeply considering the analysis. "Can you make yourself cry on purpose?"

"What?" Cloud balked.

"It's really hot when you come so hard you cry a little," Sephiroth murmured. "Try to do that in the video you're gonna make for me. You're five-seven."

"Bullshit!" Cloud snatched the measuring tape away and looked for himself in the mirror. To his amazement, the readout with his feet flat and his back straight was indeed five feet, seven inches. "Oh my GOD!"

"See? Toldja you got taller," Sephiroth gloated. "I win."

Cloud was too far-gone in ecstasy to care. He bunched up the ribbon of measuring tape into a furious little ball and threw it up into the air like confetti. "YES! Oh yes! Oh fucking sweet Jesus! Sephiroth?! You think I'll grow more every time I limit break?!"

"I'm scared to find out."

Cloud laughed, throwing his arms up around Sephiroth's neck. "Do you realize I've grown _five inches_ since I met you? You don't have such a shrimpy little boyfriend anymore! I'm a total stud!"

"Hell yeah, you're fuckin' hot," Sephiroth readily agreed.

"And you loved me way before I became hot!" Cloud cried in supreme victory. "Your low standards paid off in the end!"

That was too absurd to even respond to. Even if he hadn't gained an inch or a pound since meeting him, Sephiroth would have been totally satisfied. Cloud had magic in his hands and on his lips, everything else was just a very nice bonus.

Sephiroth pressed his body against all of it as he moved in close to Cloud. "… You done in the shower?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna get dressed?"

Cloud's hands lifted to frame Sephiroth's hips and pull him closer, "Can we not?"

Sephiroth couldn't contain a broad smile. "Not so bad gettin' up early, right?"

From his vantage point, Cloud was given a view in the bathroom mirror of Sephiroth's strong back, wet hair and cute, athletic little ass. His rampant joy from his growth spurt faded only slightly when his brain began the inevitable comparison between the two of them. Sephiroth was just _better_ in every way.

Cloud mentally complimented himself on how deeply cut his muscles were, and strong he was becoming, although it was presented in a petite package. He could still fit his entire body inside Sephiroth's and have plenty of room to spare, but his body was still perfectly capable of holding down this big, gorgeous man.

Sephiroth turned his head to see what Cloud was staring at, and smiled at him in the mirror. "What?"

"We look good naked," Cloud admitted aloud.

Sephiroth assessed them both with an approving nod. "I'd fuck us."

Cloud looked away from the mirror and up at Sephiroth. "I have a regret."

"About what?"

"About how I acted the other night at Dirty Rubbers, being so stupid and embarrassed about the mirror. That's not like me."

"You get a little shy sometimes, but you're still cool," Sephiroth gave his chin an affectionate pinch. "It's no big deal."

Cloud shook his head, "You don't understand. When I'm alone, I actually… _like_ to watch myself in the mirror."

Sephiroth's face didn't change at all for a moment, until he realized what was being implied. Slowly his eyebrows lifted, "Say what?"

The volume of Cloud's voice dropped, "... I like to watch myself in the mirror when I'm..."

"Why don't I know about this?" Sephiroth demanded, bending his knees a little to slip his hands down to cup Cloud's ass. "Why you keepin' secrets like that from me?"

"Because it's personal!" Cloud giggled, unable to resist rolling his hips against Sephiroth's when their groins pressed together. Sephiroth's cock was stiff against him, and it made it much easier to talk about sexual matters knowing he was being actively listened to. "When we were in the dressing room with that big mirror, I think I was just afraid of _you_ seeing us making love, because… my body's nothing like yours. I was afraid I might look really stupid, or awkward to you."

"You don't," Sephiroth assured him.

"I know there's not a lot of time and we have to leave soon, but… I'm feeling really brave and really tall, and _really_ horny right now. Will you sit down?"

Sephiroth immediately dropped down onto the toilet seat.

Cloud was bright red, and struggled to form the words. "You... can't really see anything in the mirror from there... most bathrooms are designed that way on purpose so you don't have to watch yourself on the toilet. You have to sit on the edge of the tub."

"You know this from experience, huh?"

Cloud nodded.

Sephiroth designed the bathroom himself, and Cloud was correct about the mirror placement. He would have given anything to go back in time and make the entire fucking bathroom wall a mirror. He slid over to the edge of the bathtub, and looked up at Cloud to very eagerly accept whatever was about to happen.

Cloud approached him to stand between his spread knees, and pressed his nose to the top of Sephiroth's head. The smell of his hair and scalp was slightly diluted from the shower, and Cloud smiled as he kissed a line down Sephiroth's forehead, down his nose and finally to his lips. Cloud smiled against his mouth when he felt Sephiroth's hands cup his ass and spread his cheeks apart.

Cloud broke away from the kiss to turn his head to look in the mirror. Sephiroth's long fingered hands spread across the entire span of his cheeks, like his body had designed itself around providing Sephiroth the perfect handful of ass. Cloud arched his back, offering a better angle and a wider gap for Sephiroth to see his hole in the mirror's reflection.

"That looks good," Sephiroth murmured, watching Cloud's body move and react to him in the reflection. He gave one cheek a light slap.

"Do it harder," Cloud whispered, riding high on a brave rush of lust.

Sephiroth snickered under his breath, and obliged Cloud with a nicely resonating slap. It left a tiny pink mark on his cheek, which Sephiroth then matched on the other side. He loved the sound that escaped Cloud on impact, and did it again on each side to force that beautiful, shocked moan out of him again.

Cloud was breathing hard as he roughly pushed his forehead against Sephiroth's. "... Wanna kiss it, now?"

"Am I dreamin'?" Sephiroth asked aloud.

Cloud had to laugh, and steadied himself with his hands on Sephiroth's shoulders. "Please don't make me lose my nerve. This is hard for me…"

"Askin' me to kiss your ass should be the easiest thing in the world. Turn around."

Cloud covered his face, making a noise between a giggle and a groan as he obeyed and shyly presented his ass. Sephiroth reached down to take one of Cloud's ankles and guide that foot up onto the toilet seat. It left him slightly bent over and wide open at the perfect height for Sephiroth's tongue to drag up the back of his freshly washed balls and up to his ass. Sephiroth greatly preferred the way Cloud tasted naturally to the soapy, sterile taste after a shower, but just the feeling of his puckered hole against his tongue was enough to make him push his face in deeper.

Cloud watched their reflection in slightly disturbed awe as Sephiroth's strong jaw worked against the curve of his cheek. Sephiroth ate ass like it was the best taste in the world, and Cloud was too distracted by watching him work to feel any embarrassment at all. He nudged back against his face, and smiled when his hips were grabbed by rough hands to pull him even closer. Cloud finally let a moan slip free as Sephiroth stretched his tongue out to lick a hot line up the back of his balls.

After pushing his face in again to give it one last deep swipe of his tongue, Sephiroth squeezed Cloud's thigh, "Turn around again."

He took his foot off the toilet seat to turn his hips toward Sephiroth's mouth, and gasped as the head of his cock was immediately slurped between wet, warm lips. Cloud snuck glances at the mirror between watching the actual thing, and never noticed or particularly cared how shallow Sephiroth gave head. It felt so good between his soft, pale lips, with his hot tongue working against the tip, but eventually Cloud became restless with curiosity.

"Hold still, Pretty," he whispered, steadying Sephiroth's head with gentle hands and getting his fingers into his wet hair. He then inched his hips forward, watching in the mirror as his cock slowly disappeared between Sephiroth's lips. Less than halfway down, Sephiroth gagged slightly, prompting Cloud to let him go and pull back a bit.

Something like shame crept onto Sephiroth's face, "I'm limited. Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry!" Cloud giggled, kissing Sephiroth's abused throat as he slid down onto his knees in front of him.

"You gonna show me how it's done?" Sephiroth encouraged, brushing Cloud's wet hair off his forehead.

"I just wanna taste you," Cloud stuck his tongue out and ran it along the firm, slightly rounded contours of Sephiroth's chest. He kissed both small nipples and paused to leave a sucking mark against the top of his ribcage near his tattoo, a favorite stop on the way down Sephiroth's body. He then ran his tongue down to his belly button, and Cloud sat on his calves, abandoning his boyfriend's perfectly sculpted stomach to instead kiss against the top of his thighs.

Cloud was feeling very much like putting on a performance for his boyfriend that morning. He spread Sephiroth's legs wider as he settled into work, smiling at how Sephiroth's cock twitched involuntarily at the feeling of his lips kissing along the shaft. It looked thick and delicious against the silver matting of his damp, trim pubic hair, especially as a couple of water drops still had yet to dry from the hard muscled expanse of his lower stomach. Cloud stuck out his tongue to lick those droplets off of Sephiroth's clean skin, and then ducked his head to lick the salty moisture that pooled on the tip of his cock.

Cloud easily took most of it, letting it jab against the back of his throat before tightening his mouth and pulling back to drag his lips up the thick shaft. He looked up as he tilted his head, letting Sephiroth watch his tongue slip around the rosy head before popping his lips against it in a kiss.

With a few more passes, Cloud worked up the tolerance to drop down all the way. He shook his head a little, working down the last few centimeters until his lips were pushed against Sephiroth's abdomen, and his throat was full of his pulsing cock.

Sephiroth's hands tenderly rubbed the back of Cloud's head, and then tightened in his wet hair as he began to suck in earnest. The bathroom filled with that beautiful sound of wet suction, accented by Cloud's gasps for air between passes of his lips.

The mirror didn't do much for Sephiroth's view, because all he could really see was the back of Cloud's head bobbing up and down. It was soft core compared to the killer point of view he had naturally, but it was extremely nice to see the reflection of Cloud's back and ass as he knelt before him, bouncing a little bit on his calves in arousal and excitement as he worked.

Cloud suddenly pulled away with a sharp gasp, rubbing his reddened lips together, "Can I do whatever I want?"

"Would you please?" Sephiroth grinned down at him.

Cloud hopped to his feet, and leaned past Sephiroth to search among the products for their tube of lubricant. Sephiroth ran hands up his thighs and kissed his ribs as he twisted around to find the lube. They'd gotten away with using conditioner or body wash as lube a couple of times, but eventually learned the hard way the "external use only" was a polite way of saying "it's a horrible idea to use this as sexual lubricant, because one wrong move and it's going to feel like your ass is on fire". During that fateful sexual encounter, Cloud suddenly started to cry out and struggle in his arms, and Sephiroth's ego told him that he was doing a fantastic job… until Cloud punched him in the shoulder and demanded to be put the fuck down. Since then, they made sure to leave a bottle of PleasureGlide in the shower at all times.

Cloud retrieved it with a shy smile, opening the top of the cap with his teeth. He turned it upside down to let it drizzle out onto Sephiroth's erection, waving the bottle to let ribbons land on his upper thighs, lower stomach and chest as well.

Sephiroth's face lit up with a sharp smile. "What the hell are you doin'?"

"You said I can do what I want! I want you wet and shiny..." Cloud explained, biting his lip as he spread lube all over Sephiroth's chest, stomach, thighs and arms. "Fuck, that's gorgeous..."

"You know I gotta go to work, right?" Sephiroth pretended to complain as he arched against Cloud's hands as they greedily rubbed all over his body.

"We'll take another quick shower," Cloud waved off the concern by pushing Sephiroth's thighs together. He then turned around to face the mirror, and threw a leg over Sephiroth's lap. "Help me figure this out."

"Ain't nothin' to figure out," Sephiroth was easily able to lift Cloud up by his knees, leaving him wide open and exposed in front of the mirror.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Cloud whispered, leaning back against Sephiroth's chest. He savored the sight of his boyfriend holding him up and his big cock so hard and eager to push inside. He reached down to point it towards his body, brushing the head against his hole and giggling when his body involuntarily twitched in response.

"I love when it winks like that," Sephiroth said, watching from over his shoulder.

"Don't be gross right now," Cloud tsked, trying to concentrate on relaxing.

After a few moments of trial and error, Cloud got the right angle to let Sephiroth's head sink inside. He gasped as it slipped in, pushing lube around his hole with a deliciously wet slide of hard flesh against willing body.

After an inch or two disappeared, Cloud nodded. "Put me down slow."

Sephiroth gently released his hold on Cloud's thighs to let him ease down until his feet were touching the floor. He remained patient and still as Cloud sank down lower with tiny, teasing wriggles of his hips as he took it deep inside.

When he was fully seated, Cloud let out a sharp exhale, "I need to just sit here a second."

Sephiroth swallowed down a moan at the feeling of that perfect little ass hugging him balls deep. That rounded curve was still pink from getting slapped, and looked damn good resting against his lap. He ran his hands up Cloud's slim back appreciatively. "... You doin' okay?"

Cloud moved then, just a slight circle of his ass on top of Sephiroth's thighs. "… Yeah. I could almost come without even moving."

"You wanna try?" Sephiroth smiled as he bumped his lips against Cloud's neck from behind.

"Not really," Cloud whispered with a strained giggle, experimentally tightening his inner muscles before relaxing again. "I'd rather just… totally use you right now."

Sephiroth growled in his throat, completely surprised by how forward Cloud was being that morning. "Do whatever feels good."

"Look," Cloud suggested.

Cloud's eyes were bright as they met Sephiroth's in the reflection, and the narrowed as he lifted his thighs to drag his tight ass up the base of Sephiroth's cock. He paused before dropping back down with a smack of his soft ass against Sephiroth's thighs.

Cloud gave a few more experimental lifts and drops before he found his footing and began to bounce steadily against Sephiroth's lap. "Seph…"

"What?" Sephiroth asked innocently, running his hands over Cloud's thighs as they worked to lift up and then relaxed to let him drop back down.

Cloud hissed slightly, "This feels so good."

"Not shy about the mirror this time?"

Cloud shook his head, his mouth a tight line as he swallowed down a deep groan. "Mm-mm."

"Good," Sephiroth's eyes were fixed on the way Cloud's cock was wagging from the motion of his hips. That was one of his favorite things about watching Cloud ride, especially when it started to drool out between his legs. He didn't want to encroach on Cloud's power, so he gave it an experimental brush of his fingers to gauge Cloud's reaction.

"Touch me," Cloud nodded, covering one of Sephiroth's hands with his own and moving it to his groin. Cloud gasped as he began to move his hips a slightly different way, stimulating himself from the inside as he began to bounce faster. "I like to - "

"What?" Sephiroth asked, curious about Cloud's sexual demands because so far, they'd been a fucking a dream come true.

"Seph…" Cloud whispered again, turning his head to brush his lips against Sephiroth's as he spoke. "... I like to watch us fuck."

Sephiroth kissed that last word off his lips, because that was by far his favorite thing that Cloud had ever said. He pushed his tongue into Cloud's mouth, enjoying the sensation of a wet, hot tongue caressing his. "You feel good, baby?"

"So good," Cloud assured.

"C'mon," Sephiroth purred, moving his fist around Cloud's cock a little faster in case he missed the point.

"Almost," Cloud told him, his smoky blue eyes burning underneath his wet, dark lashes. There was something very erotic about eye contact via the reflection, and as a bonus he wasn't missing any of Sephiroth's hardened, concentrating expressions either. "… I want you to come inside me."

"In this tight little ass?" Sephiroth asked, staring back at Cloud's reflection as he kissed his cheek from behind.

"Fill it up," Cloud whispered.

"You're fuckin' _nasty_ this mornin'," He smiled, unable to resist popping his hips up against Cloud's ass, adding to the bounce.

"Sorry," Cloud pretended to apologize, licking his lips while still staring into his vivid green eyes. "I know you have to go… I promise I won't make you late for work. Just… let me use you for a little longer, Sir."

"What?" Sephiroth asked, straining to be still and let Cloud ride. He focused his pent up aggression on a little play acting, and thrust his hand into Cloud's damp hair to tug his head backwards when he didn't answer right away. "What'd you just say to me?"

A wide smile spread on Cloud's mouth as he continued to bounce steadily on Sephiroth's lap, "Please… let me use you a little longer?"

"What?" Sephiroth growled, turning Cloud's chin to look at him up close. "What'd you call me?"

" _Sir_ ," Cloud whispered the operative word again, tonguing a hot kiss onto his boyfriend's parted lips. He tangled his fingers into long, wet hair. "You're gonna make me come so hard, Sephiroth."

He loved the way Cloud rolled his r's as he said his full name. His lips were open against Cloud's, swallowing small whimpers with answering with deeper, rumbling groans of his own. The beautiful slap of flesh echoed off the acoustics of the bathroom, and the dull roar of pumping blood filled their ears like the sound of an oncoming train.

Sephiroth held himself strong and steady for Cloud's use, enjoying being fully connected to a hot, tight little body that was finding its own pleasure from his. Watching Cloud's back and ass as he rode was like the kind of daydream he'd have before he even recognized how much he lusted after a male body; heated skin, rolling muscle, a sweet ass taking him deep, and the relentless pull of someone strong and familiar having their way with him.

He noticed Cloud's thighs trembling as he continued to work, and that his pace was desperate but slowing down. He let Cloud struggle for a few more moments, as that exhausted determination was something erotic in and of itself.

Finally he kissed the side of Cloud's face, smiling at the salty taste of sweat. "You ready for some help?"

"Yes," Cloud hissed, dropping deep and pushing Sephiroth's hard cock against the best angle inside one last time. He fully understood that he was about to unleash a beast, and he was ready for it.

Sephiroth stood up and bent Cloud over the bathroom sink without disconnecting from his body. In the next instant he was behind him and pounding hard, growling in his throat as his balls slapped against the back of Cloud's.

"Seph!" Cloud cried out, his forehead pressed against the cool counter top.

"Open your eyes," Sephiroth demanded, reaching forward with one hand to prop Cloud's chin up. "You wanted to watch us fuck, right?"

Cloud throat bobbed in appreciation of the view. Sephiroth's athletic hips were pumping hard behind him, sending a reverberation that made Cloud's ass bounce just enough. His handsome face was set into harsh lines of concentration, that severe culmination of tension before the most beautiful moment of release. When their eyes met in the reflection, Sephiroth's hand let go of his hair and smoothed it, and his lips softened into an intimate smile that nobody else in the world ever got to see.

Sephiroth couldn't help smiling at the expression Cloud wore when he was about to come. There was always a touch of confusion, and a wild, desperate light in his eyes as his cheeks and chest flashed bright pink. It wasn't some porn-esque, wanton expression at all – it was completely involuntary, and wasn't something that Cloud could recreate on purpose if he wanted to. It was pure honesty, and it summed up the kind of lover and partner that Cloud was.

"Oh fuck," Cloud's voice cracked, and his body tightened on Sephiroth. "Seph!"

"Do it," Sephiroth urged, slowly dragging his fist down to the base of Cloud's cock and letting it pulse against his palm.

Cloud was gasping and soft, unintelligible whispers that sounded like Sephiroth's name escaped as he pushed himself against the inside of Sephiroth's hand. He worked himself on Sephiroth's cock from the inside, using it to prolong the climax. His thick semen splattered against Sephiroth's bathroom cabinets, and somewhere in the back of his mind he was balking at the mess he'd just made, but it was immediately hushed by Sephiroth's deep, throaty cry of release against his ear.

Sephiroth's climax was sudden, a surprisingly sharp burst of release that burned bright and fast. He let it out deep inside of Cloud, giving him exactly what he'd asked for. His balls pulsed against the back of Cloud's, and he could feel him holding himself tight and then relaxing, hugging him and coaxing more out as he rolled his ass back.

Cloud smiled back at him with lidded eyes, nudging backwards with one more tight, internal squeeze of muscle. Sephiroth gave his ass a mild slap as he pulled away, unable to help glancing down to admire the damage he'd caused to Cloud's body.

"Hmm," he couldn't help but groan, as Cloud's ass never looked prettier than when it was reddened and drooling out his load. "... Let it run out."

"Don't be disgusting and ruin my afterglow," Cloud sighed dreamily, tightening it up impossibly tiny. It actually served to push out a dab of Sephiroth's semen, making it bubble as it slid down the back of his balls.

"This is afterglow," Sephiroth held Cloud's hips in place, dipping his knees to press himself up between Cloud's thighs. He wrapped his arms around Cloud's shoulders from behind, and began to rock him slowly in place in front of the mirror. "See? There's cuddling."

"Cuddling is nice," Cloud whispered as he felt his boyfriend's cock still stiff between his legs. "... You wanna keep going?"

Sephiroth groaned in mock disapproval. "You just drained half my fuckin' HP and it's not even enough for you."

"So in theory, think I gained some experience points?" Cloud grinned as he craned his neck up and looked up at Sephiroth expectantly.

"If you did, you fuckin' earned it." He obeyed the silent request and leaned down to let Cloud press sweet kisses across his jaw, chin, and lips. Sephiroth accepted the gentle assault, meeting the ones that landed on his mouth with soft, available lips.

The post-sex endorphins arrived with those kisses, and Sephiroth was lifted out of the confines of his aching body to something heavenly. To be sexually wrung out by this young man was the ultimate in satisfaction, and his heart pounded against his ribcage as Cloud's body and lips pulled away.

Cloud pulled on Sephiroth's hand as he turned to step into the tub. "Now we have to clean up all over again!"

"Your fault," Sephiroth responded, looking twice as ravaged as the endorphins faded and he was left feeling exhausted.

Cloud on the other hand was fully energized as he went about his post-sex cleanup routine. It involved a lot of bending over and awkward angles. "When you get home from the Crater, can we go to Ikea and get one of those hand held shower things?"

Sephiroth raked his hands down his face, not even caring if he was rinsing off all of the lube he was doused in. "Sure."

Cloud let out a little cheer, "Fuck work and fuck school. Let's go back to bed and leave everything we have to do for another day. Let's just sleep in late… then we can go get some food, go to Ikea, maybe go see a movie, then come home and just sit around and cuddle…"

Those were Sephiroth's favorite kind of days. He'd shared many with Cloud, and they'd have many, many more together in the future. "Can't fuck work this time. Can we do that when I get home?"

"It's a date," Cloud smiled as he turned off the water. He stepped out of the tub and began to dry off, and turned around to huff at the General, who was still leaning against the wall and half asleep. "Seph!"

"What?"

"It's four-forty, and you still have to dry your hair!" Cloud laughed, not even mentioning the fact that Sephiroth's abdomen was still slick with lube. "We have to leave like right now."

"Carry me."

Laughing at the reversal of their former roles, Cloud found gusto to peel Sephiroth's lazy body off the shower wall, "Come on, I'll dry your hair for you. It the least I can do after draining your life force."

"Thanks babe," Sephiroth yawned, straddling the toilet seat backwards and resting his head on his arms while Cloud performed the task of toweling off, then drying his hair in sections. He'd done this many times, and made much quicker work of it than if Sephiroth were doing it himself.

"This is an awkward length, isn't it?" Cloud smiled, running his fingers through the short silver hair around Sephiroth's temples where the medical lab had shaved a small area on his head the previous year.

"Doesn't bother me," Sephiroth purred, enjoying the feeling of someone taking care of his hair for him.

Cloud stroked the area of short, glossy hair for a moment. "You're going to cut your hair someday, aren't you?"

"I don't plan on it," Sephiroth sighed. "But maybe."

"I wouldn't mind," Cloud decided, imagining that crop of short hair covering his beloved's head, and maybe even half shaved. Sephiroth would look catastrophically handsome with no long, gorgeous hair to soften the blow of how striking his bone structure was. "... But if you do ever decide to cut it, please don't shock me with it. I'd need plenty of warning, or else I might have a heart attack."

"Cloud."

"Hm?"

"... I was serious, before. Someday we should make this legit between us. I know you want to."

For a few moments the only sound was the hair dryer, and then Cloud cleared his throat. "I told you... you don't have to do anything like that. We're good how we are. We're already legit."

"I know," Sephiroth picked his cheek up off of his arm and turned a gaze back at Cloud. "... I was just thinkin', it'd be nice havin' a real last name."

Cloud turned off the dryer. "What? You want to be a _Strife_?"

Sephiroth shrank a few centimeters, "That's dumb, isn't it?"

"No," Cloud put the dryer down and pulled Sephiroth's shoulder to face him. "When is someday?"

Sephiroth thought for a moment, deciding what length of time would be appropriate for either of them to reveal catastrophic flaws or back out gracefully. "How does five years sound?"

"Reasonable," Cloud agreed, and extended his pinky finger.

Sephiroth curled his pinky around Cloud's. One was long, pale and the nail was bitten to a bloody stump. The other was short, tan, and the nicely manicured nail was dotted underneath and around the edges with dirt. Those pinkies belonged together, and Sephiroth had to grin as he pulled on Cloud's pinky to kiss it. "Don't talk to me about this again for five years, though."

Cloud leaned forward, nose to nose with his beloved. "... Talk about getting _married_ , you mean?"

"Ugh," Sephiroth groaned, letting go of Cloud's pinky. "Nevermind, I don't wanna."

"No, you _do_ want to! I was perfectly willing to drop the matter, but you're just so in _love_ with me that you need to legally own me!"

"When you put it that way... yeah, pretty much."

"But wait! Are we getting married in five years, or are we going to start _planning_ to get married in five years?"

"Aw, shit..." Sephiroth grumbled. "I dunno. The first option."

"So we need to start planning in _four_ years if we're getting married in five years," Cloud was blinking rapidly. "And! And, and can I start calling you my fiancé? No, no, no! I don't want to start calling you that yet, because long engagements never work out, so we should wait! We're... we're just planning right now. Nobody can know but us, because then they'll be even more horrible and discouraging than they already are about everything... what we have is a _secret_ , pre-planned engagement!"

"Who's horrible and discouraging?"

Cloud wasn't listening, "And this isn't your proposal! You have to like, do something romantic in four years! When I least expect it!"

"'Kay."

"I really don't want a ring, though," Cloud grimaced. "They're uncomfortable and seem dangerous in our work. Can we just not do rings?"

Sephiroth let out a gust of air, and lifted his hand up. "Fuck yes, thank God. I love you for sayin' that."

"I love you, too!" Cloud beamed, hitting Sephiroth's hand in an affectionate high-five. "Kiss me!"

Sephiroth reached back to curl an arm around Cloud's waist, and leaned up to meet him in a smiling kiss. "... Talk to ya in four years."

"Don't forget, though!"

"I won't," Sephiroth's lips curved into a smile at how happy Cloud was, even though all he'd really done was agree to the idea. He didn't want to be greedy with his feelings anymore, not when Cloud was always so generous with his own. There was always the possibility that they'd just set an expiration date for their relationship, because a whole fuck of a lot could happen... but Sephiroth had a feeling that Cloud was his teammate for life.

Cloud turned the dryer back on to finish his future husband's hair, and found that he was even more enamored with it than usual. "Forget what I said before – no husband of _mine_ is cutting his gorgeous hair off."

Sephiroth had to chuckle at the change of heart. "Look how much work it takes, though. You don't even gotta do anything to your hair and it looks awesome."

Cloud glanced in the mirror and grimaced to find that it had fully air dried already, and was sticking up in every conceivable direction. "You like it when it's like this?"

"Hell yeah, I do."

Cloud squinted one eye suspiciously, fully prepared to be the butt of a joke. "You prefer this to when I fix it?"

"It always looks good," He offered gently, knowing he was treading on sensitive ground. "But my favorite is when it looks like it does right now."

Cloud realized that Sephiroth was the only person in his entire life who had never attempted to scratch his spikes down flat, or lick his hand to attempt to slick it down, or complain that his hair was blocking the view of something. If anything, Sephiroth played with his hair in a fully appreciative sense, instigating his spikes to stand up wilder.

Sephiroth _wanted to marry_ these spikes.

After a moment of hesitation, Cloud decided to let his hair be free, and instead pulled on his uniform while Sephiroth squeezed into some leather. After a quick stop in the kitchen to fill two thermoses with their hot drink of choice and grab a pastry for the ride, they finally made it out the front door. Cloud wasn't even late for school; Sephiroth drove on the sidewalk to get him there on time.

"Text me when you get to the Crater, love!" Cloud told him after their final kiss goodbye. He trotted happily towards the direction of the training field before he heard Sephiroth's voice call out to him across the parking lot.

"Did you leave your jizz all over the bathroom cabinets?"

Cloud froze and turned around to offer Sephiroth a guilty shrug. "Sorry!"

"Can you do somethin' about that while I'm gone?" Sephiroth asked with a sleepy, but very satisfied grin.

"I'll take care of it this weekend," Cloud rocked on his feet with a playful smile. "... After I get the new phones broken in. I lost a bet this morning, right?"

"You better clean up after yourself. I'm bringin' a DNA kit back with me," Sephiroth teased. "I better not find anything under the blacklight."

"Maybe I'll write my name on the bathroom cabinets!" Cloud stuck out his tongue.

"Nasty..." Sephiroth responded with approval in his tone. He clearly wanted to stay and flirt some more, but instead rolled up his window and sailed the tank out of the parking lot.

Cloud waved shamelessly as he left, maybe to be noticed In Sephiroth's rear view mirror or maybe not. He liked to think Sephiroth gave at least one glance backwards whenever he had to leave. Cloud dropped his arm when the tank was gone, and had a smile on his face as he walked to class.

There were a group of cadets smoking nearby. They'd just overheard General Sephiroth discussing bodily fluids with Cloud Strife, but it wasn't even a story worth repeating. If it was anybody else other than Cloud it might have been viable gossip, but as it was, Sephiroth and Cloud's bodily fluids were old news.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cloud met the day head on and even did pretty okay in his first advanced sword training class, was conscious enough to pay attention in his academic classes, and didn't allow anyone to make a fuss over him – although nobody had that intention in mind anyway. Everybody got hurt, everybody bled, and almost everybody broke a limit. Cloud was the smallest, but he certainly wasn't special, so he held it together until the very end of the day.

The stupid baseball class was the one that actually finished him. When he swung the bat, he felt and a pop in his side that gave way to searing pain. He hobbled back to the dugout and managed to play it off until the final bell, and then sat there casually until his classmates had cleared the baseball field.

When Cloud was finally alone, he gingerly tried to stand up, but failed. And so he began to travel to his dorm room by the only mode possible: rolling.

He made it off the baseball diamond and was in the middle of an uninterrupted lateral roll across the training field when he heard Skylar's voice call out to him, "Cloud! What the hell are you doing?"

Cloud cursed under his breath, but then masked any pain by posing carelessly on his stomach as though he was simply lying on his bed. "Hey Skylar! What's up?"

"I haven't seen you since you were all bloody. You feel better?"

"Yeah, thanks for asking!" Cloud grimaced a little as he turned onto his side to appear relaxed as Skylar approached him. "Guess what? I got into an advanced sword training class with Junior SOLDIERs!"

"That's awesome! … So why are we rolling?"

Cloud's pose faltered a little, "It's good for your core."

"Can you get up?"

"No."

"C'mon loser," he laughed, very gently helping Cloud to his feet and brushing some of the snow off of him. "So how did the Junior SOLDIERs treat you?"

"As expected," Cloud teetered a little bit on wobbly legs. "… They're _terrifying_ up close. Way scarier than First Class SOLDIERS."

"They're just assholes who got a little Mako and think they're so much better than us."

"I know, it's the unbalanced part that makes them scary." Cloud shivered as his muscles began to cool down and he felt the winter chill. They were encouraged to wear only tank tops considering that was the SOLDIER uniform, even at the Northern Crater. Showing up for morning drills in a hoodie was considered rookie behavior for Cadets in their second year at the Academy. Cloud crossed his arms against the cold. "Where are you going right now?"

"To my room to change, then to get some dinner. I was thinking about going to the gym, too. I need a leg day."

"Leg day sounds great!" Cloud nodded pleasantly, pretending that he wasn't in horrible pain and that he wasn't leaning all of his weight on his friend as they took small baby steps. "I'm not supposed to lift anything heavy for a bit, maybe we can make it a whole leg week challenge. What do you think?"

"I think you need to go to medical," Skylar answered.

"No!" Cloud yelped. "Just walk me to my room. Cam has a whole case of potions."

"Why didn't you just ask?" Skylar shrugged out of one strap of his backpack, then dug around inside until he took out a potion to offer.

Cloud hesitated, because those were damn expensive. He didn't mind taking one from Cameron because as roommates, they often bought communal supplies and it always evened out. But his side was splitting and he was sort of feeling like maybe he was bleeding internally or something, so he took the can. "…Thank you so much."

"No big deal," Skylar watched as his friend struggled to swallow the entire can of nasty, but extremely effective medicine.

"But the Advanced class is really fun!" Cloud burped when he was finished, able to stand up a little straighter and walk on his own as the potion took effect. "William got transferred to that class too, so I'm not the only one who isn't a Junior SOLDER. I got moved out of my Infantry class to make room for it in my schedule. I wish they would have moved me out of Wutainese instead!"

"Why? I do all your work for you."

"I do all my work myself! You just… double check it," Cloud then offered him a very formal 'thank you my dear friend' kind of saying in Wutainese that was only ever found on greeting cards or embroidered on old lady pillows. When Cloud attempted to speak Wutainese, he sounded like a disgruntled gay toddler. It wasn't actually much different than he normally sounded.

Skylar grabbed the strap of Cloud's snow-encrusted backpack. "C'mon, I'm hungry. Let's change in your room then get some food."

"Okay!" Cloud sped up, practically prancing now that he wasn't in any pain – not even from the quick, rough sex he'd scored that morning. He then slowed down, wrinkling his eyebrows as a distant memory hinted from an unconscious place in his mind. He wasn't mad at Skylar, but he should have been. Where his anger used to be was instead a hazy memory of a gentle conversation while the world was spinning. "...We talked when I was hurt, right?"

"Yeah. I was with you on the helicopter ride back."

"That's right!" Cloud remembered, and then groaned, "Did I say anything embarrassing?"

"Not at all." Skylar wrapped his arm around Cloud's neck. "Don't worry, I'm already over you."

Cloud smiled and wrapped his arm around Skylar's waist as they walked. He wanted to say something, but he didn't have any idea of how to communicate his relief to have this boy in his life as a best friend. He loved Skylar. He wanted to be in SOLDIER with Skylar, he wanted Skylar at his wedding in five years, he wanted Skylar over at his house for cheesecake when they were in their sixties.

Skylar filled the amicable silence with a triumphant noise. "I sucked a _monster_ cock on Sunday night!"

Cloud was struck by giggles at the outburst. "Really?"

"Like, jaw stretching monster."

"Was the rest of him cute?"

"Definitely."

"You fuck him?" Cloud prompted.

"Nah."

"He fuck you?"

"I don't think it'd be possible with a dick like his."

"Did he at least get you off?" Cloud asked.

"Nah."

"Why do you always _do_ that?" Cloud wondered, only understanding the natural give and take that a committed couple shared during a sexual experience.

Skylar however, had the working knowledge of a single man and understood how fleeting and meaningless a sexual encounter could be. He shrugged a shoulder. "There's like this power knowing you can play someone like that. Like... just getting someone really hot to come for me is enough sometimes."

"I can understand that I guess," Cloud conceded with a side eye before perking up. "So this guy you were with is cute _and_ has a monster cock? He obviously doesn't go to this school."

"He used to."

Cloud slowed his roll a little bit. "...Is it who I think it is?"

Skylar had every intention of making Cloud work for this information, but he had to fucking tell somebody before he exploded. " _Angeal_."

"Are you…" Cloud sucked in a chestful of air before bellowing, " – FUCKING KIDDING ME? Oh! Did you go on a date? Where'd you go?"

"No, we didn't go on a fucking _date_ , Cloud. We went to a bar, and then I sucked him off in the bathroom."

"That's a date, though!" Cloud gushed, clasping his hands happily.

"It was _not_ ," Skylar insisted.

"What do you consider a date, then?"

"A date is like..." Skylar sighed. "You talk for a long time. Months. Years, even. And you're attracted to each other, but you cultivate this amazing friendship before anything happens. And then he finally asks you out. You hold hands, and you eat something, and you go to the movies, and at the end you just like, have a little kiss. And you try to be a whore and make him go further, but he's a respectable boy and goes home. Then you run into your room and write in your journal, and like just _furiously_ masturbate. And then you go to sleep happy, because you're in love and it's totally pure. Then he doesn't think you're a slut and he calls back the very next day."

It took Cloud a lot of restraint not to interrupt Skylar during this explanation, and he began counting the rebuttals off on his fingers. "First of all, you _are_ a slut. Second, you're this big macho top all of the sudden, so you can't even fit into your own fantasy because you don't _let_ anyone treat you like that. Third, I've been on that so-called dream date that you described. I'd _much_ rather Sephiroth take me somewhere sleazy to get me drunk and let me blow him, than do all that shy tip-toeing. Being a virgin was the darkest time of my life!"

" _First_ of all," Skylar mimicked. "You were a virgin for like five minutes last year, so don't act like you waited for anything but an opportunity. And I'm a slut, I know that. But I just want a guy to like... not take advantage of that. I want a guy that I really like to tell me no, and that waiting is worth it. Not for love or anything, but just... to wait for… _something_."

"So your dream guy rejects you sexually and strings you along for some undetermined length of time, for some obscure reason that _isn't_ love?"

"It doesn't sound as nice the way you say it."

"If a guy actually treated you like that, you would slit his throat!" Cloud predicted, shivering hard as a winter wind gusted at them from the flat training field.

"I wouldn't mind someone taking time with me, to at least _attempt_ to care about me," Skylar rubbed his bare, goosebump covered arms as he took a look all around them. They were getting closer to the dorms, and there was heavier traffic of cadets, and he certainly didn't want anyone overhearing this conversation. He lowered his voice, "Like I don't need to be in love, because I can't force that or expect that. And it's not the most important thing in my life right now, anyways. But I guess if it happened… that'd be nice."

As someone who had always considered love a top priority in life, Cloud pondered his friend's situation. He even put himself into the equation, because Skylar certainly saw some sort of potential for romance between the two of them. Cloud wasn't sure if he would even consider Skylar dateable if Sephiroth weren't a factor... if for no other reason than Skylar had managed to fuck every decent looking person in school, and he had rarely enjoyed any of those encounters. Skylar was looking for something very specific, and very imaginary.

Cloud changed the subject. "So... are you going to see Angeal again?"

"I dunno."

"Do you want to?"

"I dunno."

"You have to know what you want, and ask the Universe for it out loud!" Cloud proclaimed. "Or else you'll never get it."

"I want Cloud Strife to have an older brother," Skylar asked the Universe out loud. "Who is... taller, less whiny, and has a bigger ass. And who realizes punk is dead and doesn't listen to shitty, outdated music -"

"HEY!" Cloud roared.

"And would _never_ wear acid wash jeans - "

"It's back in style, though! I'm a trendsetter!"

Skylar continued, "And is cool, and laid back, and always has a blunt ready to burn. And is Wutainese so I can be with him forever without my family giving me shit."

Cloud glared up at his friend as he came to a realization, "Skylar, you want to date _yourself_."

"Of course I do. Should I ask the Universe to give me a clone?"

"You are one narcissistic sack of shit!" Cloud shoved him with a wordless shout of rage. "Can you stop making this all about _you_ and talk more about Angeal, please?"

"Yes!" Skylar smiled, a little more enthused about the entire experience. "He's a nice guy. And he's got an amazing body. And... a massive wiener."

Cloud let out a squawk of a noise at the thought of it, even forgiving his friend for using the least appealing euphemism for a penis in existence. "Make a hand circle!"

Skylar demonstrated Angeal's circumference by making what Cloud often referred to as a 'hand circle'. Angeal's circle required much more of Skylar's palms then seemed possible, but he insisted, "Not even exaggerating."

"Whoa!" Cloud looked up at Skylar through the opening between his hands, "That's like getting fucked by a sandwich!"

"I know!" Skylar laughed. "He seemed really agreeable to being bottom... I'm guessing because he usually doesn't have a choice."

"No kidding! It would literally kill me!" Cloud made a similar circle with his own hands and peered down the barrel. He couldn't fathom what kind of soul searching it would require to sit on such an object. "Did you eat his ass?"

"Not on the first date," Skylar laughed a little through his nose at how frank Cloud could be when asking sexual questions. It was a big contrast to how he used to talk about it when they'd first met. "It was nice, though... really muscular and a little hairy. Way different than what I'm used to."

Cloud gawked up at the sky as his brain filled with preposterous images. "Topping someone with a cock that huge would feel like an insult. Would you be into it?"

"Way, way, _way_ into it!" Skylar admitted, even to himself. "He's different one-on-one. Like… I know for a fact that man's been blown in a bathroom before. But he acted really cute and shocked, like I was taking advantage of him. He pretends he's this little innocent thing, and it's kind of hot."

Cloud was covering his mouth with both hands, and removed them to shoot his friend a grin. "How was kissing?"

"Have you ever made out with a bisexual guy?"

Cloud snorted, "No."

"Well, that's how Angeal kisses."

"How do bi guys kiss?"

"Have you ever made out with a girl?"

"No."

"What the hell, Cloud?" Skylar laughed. "What were you doing at parties when you were twelve years old if you weren't making out with curious guys and girls?"

"I wasn't allowed to go to parties..." Cloud groped for an excuse for having no social life as an adolescent. Cameron knew all of this shit, but Cloud had managed to keep his past mildly classified at the academy, since he'd gone to all the trouble to reinvent himself and everything. "... I spent my childhood working to take care of my abusive drunk mother. Horrible woman."

"Oh bullshit, you're the biggest mama's boy I've ever met!"

"Alright... the truth is, I was a loser in Nibelheim. Not a loser like I am now, but like an actual loser," he admitted with a shrug. "I was always short, skinny, and awkward... but also really antisocial and sad. Nobody wanted to kiss me."

"Their loss," Skylar consoled, unable to resist peeking down the front of Cloud's tank top. Even if he was working to accept the fact that he was never going to be with Cloud, Skylar would always appreciate the view down his shirt. "I bet any of those people would love to kiss you now."

"Probably," Cloud narrowed his eyes with a smug grin, as Tifa and her bitchy little friends were extremely friendly on social media. Cloud shamelessly posted shirtless pictures of himself, his friends, and sometimes even of Sephiroth. But it was actually a group picture in the gym mirror that made all the girls in Nibelheim start seriously discussing a group trip to Midgar. Not to visit Cloud, but to meet _Cameron_ , who was obnoxiously photogenic. "... Eh, they can all go to hell. Anyways, how does a bisexual guy kiss?"

Skylar sighed, "I can't describe it. It's just a little different."

"Is it weird to think that a guy you're interested in also likes girls?" Cloud wondered.

"No. Why?"

"I think it might be strange. Like... what if he's always comparing?"

"Sephiroth dated a lot of women. Don't you think he compares?"

"I think he just had different expectations," Cloud hummed as they approached the Rufus building. "He probably thought I'd be less clingy because I'm a guy. Surprise!"

"You're the definition of cling."

"I think _you_ could exercise a little cling," Cloud slid his keycard to swing through the door and let out a sigh of relief as he stepped into the warmth. "Act like you're interested. Actually _be_ interested. Cling without shame or mercy!"

"How does one cling to some guy they barely know?" Skylar asked, following his friend inside.

"Delusion and fantasy!" Cloud advised as he jogged up the stairs. "Or better yet, have you texted Angeal today? You should!"

"What do I say?"

"Say 'good morning'!"

"Nobody wants a 'good morning' text from someone they're not serious about. And it's fucking four in the afternoon, saying 'good morning' doesn't even make sense!"

"That's the beauty of a text! They don't have to make sense!" Cloud opened his door and was already working to get his clothes off, which were soaking wet with melted snow.

"HEY ASSHOLE!" Psychopath hissed, marching up to Cloud with a fierce glare. He was usually pretty pissed when Cloud was gone for a whole weekend, but this absence had stretched from Friday morning all the way until this very moment. "WHERE THA FUCK HAVE YA BEEN?"

"Missing you!" Cloud snatched Psycho's long, lean form up off the floor and gave the top of his head a kiss.

"Quit leavin' home, then!" Psycho yowled, giving Cloud's arm a warning scratch out of an emotional mix of feline possessiveness and bitter anger.

Cloud knew better than to throw the cat when he started clawing. Instead he indulged in a few moments to give Psychopath kisses and scritches while the cat rhythmically sank his claws into Cloud's bare shoulder. "Text Angeal!"

"I'm too busy watching you make out with Cam's cat."

"Text him!" Cloud demanded, putting Psychopath down. He snatched a fresh, dry pair of sweatpants and a hoodie out of his closet and closed himself into the bathroom.

"… Maybe," Skylar sighed, slipping off his fatigues and briefs which were drenched in a cold winter sweat and snow. He made awkward eye contact with Psychopath while he was naked. "… What are you staring at?"

"Your pubes," Pyscho answered calmly. "How come they're so dark? How come ya got so much of 'em?"

"I hate this fucking animal," Skylar whispered incredulously to himself as he yanked on dry underwear, completely regretting his decision to change in Cloud's room.

"Daddy?" Psychopath called out to Cloud, "How come dis creep's pubes are black if his hair's blonde? It's outta control."

Cloud let out a shrill laugh from the bathroom. "Psycho, that's a rude question!"

"What's he gonna do about it?" the cat challenged.

"Shove you into a sack, tie it tight and throw you into the ocean," Skylar answered, fully dressed.

"Bring it on," Psycho invited, his tail flapping against the windowsill.

"Did you text Angeal yet?" Cloud called from the bathroom, still giggling.

Skylar smiled and gave Psychopath a rough scratch on the head as he sat on Cameron's bed to pull his boots back on. "I'm not in a rush."

The door to the bathroom flew open, and a half naked Cloud dashed out. Like a robot drone with x-ray vision, he thrust a hand into Skylar's bag and snatched his cell phone. He was back in the bathroom behind a locked door in less than a second.

"I don't care what you say to him," Skylar snorted as he tied his laces. If Cloud thought he was going to chase him or be offended, he was mistaken. Although... Cloud certainly had the capacity to be humiliating, and Skylar's sheen of indifference faded. "But what are you saying to him, though?"

Cloud emerged from the bathroom fully dressed as he handed the phone back, "I told him good evening."

Skylar took his phone and glared at the screen. "... Handsome. You wrote 'good evening Handsome'. And you capitalized handsome?"

"Yeah! It'll make him imagine you all shiny and naked and lounging in bed like a queen..." Cloud struck a ridiculously seductive pose with his hands behind his head. "Men love getting that text."

"What men? You've only dated one, you know!" Skylar frowned, hating that Angeal would now see him as an overeager little idiot cadet. That routine worked for Cloud, but that's because Sephiroth was probably some other similar brand of clingy and insane. His face drained of color as a response lit up his phone screen. "Fuck! He already wrote back!"

"What'd he say?"

"He wrote… 'evening Sexy.' And he… capitalized sexy."

Cloud smiled knowingly as he shoved his foot inside some Converse without bothering to undo the laces. "And that my friend, is how you get into a man's head. Next time, send the text earlier than this and you'll be on his mind all day!"

Skylar put a little more faith in Cloud's technique. "What should I say now?"

" _Nothing_. Make him wait! You're too busy being sexy with a capital 'S' to text him back right now… wait a couple hours." For the record, Cloud Strife had never actually been able to follow this advice at any point in his relationship with Sephiroth.

"You have a lot of practice with this," Skylar acknowledged, totally believing Cloud's lie as he put his phone away.

"You know, you can really torment a guy with just a couple of words," Cloud let out a low sound in his throat. "Sephiroth's really good at that… every single morning he sends me something really sweet and sensual just to say hello. It's the perfect thing to wake up to."

"Read me the text he sent you this morning," Skylar challenged dryly.

"I woke up with him this morning."

"Then read me the last morning text he sent."

"Sure," Cloud fearlessly pulled out his phone. "Saturday morning… nevermind."

"No, you have to tell me what super _sensual_ text you got on Saturday morning."

Cloud sighed quietly and recited the short series of texts aloud with better grammar than his boyfriend had typed it with, "I'm up because I felt something tickle my arm, and I was so ready to kill the shit out of a bug. It was just one of your little blonde stray hairs floating around. Your hair is here in bed with me, why aren't you? Miss you much, see you tomorrow."

Skylar didn't laugh, or even smile. "… I'd love to get a text like that from my boyfriend. If I had one."

Cloud sheepishly slid his phone into this back pocket. "Let's go eat."

They were soon back out in the snow on their way to the cafeteria. Cloud was listening for the chimes of Skylar's phone, just as nervous about getting another text as Skylar was pretending not to be.

"So when Angeal texts again, don't write him off as a perv if it's something sexual. He's not trying to treat you like a slut, he's only human."

"Barely," Skylar muttered. "With that huge wiener he's part horse."

"Please stop saying _wiener_!" Cloud cried. "I'm trying to get off vicariously and I can't do it if you use that word!"

"If they're serving corndogs tonight I'm gonna get like four of them to show you how big this thing is."

They unfortunately weren't serving corndogs, but a twenty ounce can of Redbull also demonstrated the girth nicely. Skylar could fit his mouth around the can with a little work, but poor Cloud could not. So much for living vicariously.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The first hard snow of winter fell that evening, right before Sephiroth and Vincent's flight to the Northern Crater. The airship was delayed a few hours until the storm eased up, ensuring a very hungry, grumpy, and irritable flight for everyone on board. Vincent and Sephiroth hardly spoke, but somehow being mutually pissed off near each other was its own kind of male bonding experience.

Every so often Vincent would look at Sephiroth and grunt, "Fuckin' _bullshit_."

Sephiroth would agree with a roll of his eyes.

By the time they arrived at the Northern Crater base, it was the middle of the night and no real work could be done. It annoyed Sephiroth, who was very keen on getting this stupid investigation over with as soon as possible. Now they were already a day behind schedule.

Even though it was so late, Sephiroth's demanding stomach couldn't sleep without eating. They'd fed him on the airship, but he definitely needed more than a microwave meal and some stale cookies.

Sephiroth went to the cafeteria and was disheartened that it was dark and deserted at that time of the night. He didn't want to settle for vending machine food, he had a hunger that brownies and chips wouldn't... fulfill.

Sephiroth stood up a tall, looking around the room for a moment. There was some sort of intense deja-vu here. It was the sharpest, most bizarre feeling that he'd done this exact same thing before.

Deciding that there was nothing notable about this experience, he went back to weighing the option of a vending machine feast. He chalked the weird feeling up to having been to the base so recently, but it seemed like more than that… as though he'd dreamt of being here. Even the very specific nuance of facing a ravenous hunger and not wanting to eat from a vending machine. Not just any generic vending machine either, this exact selection right down to the cheap sticks of gum at the bottom.

Not only that, but everything around him felt strikingly familiar. It was a tantalizing feeling, like something was on the very tip of his tongue. Sephiroth looked around the room, following the pull of this strange familiarity. He slid over the counter of the cleaned out and empty buffet line into the darkness of the kitchen. There were refrigerators, food storage closets, stoves, and cases full of dishes, trays, and cooking equipment. Even just the layout of the cabinets full of trays and pots was distinctly familiar, although he hadn't been back in this area of the base when he and Vincent were inspecting it.

The odd feeling waned. It left him standing in the middle of the back kitchen in front of a wall of coolers. He touched the handle of the door and tightened his grip to open it, when he let out a snort and went back the way he came.

Cloud had a theory about deja-vu, and was always excited when he experienced it. He seemed to believe in astral projection, or that the soul might leave the body and wander around at night, sometimes producing eerie dreams of very real places. Sephiroth knew that Cloud talked in his sleep almost every night, and sometimes moved around in response to dream stimuli. Sephiroth had gotten sleep kisses, as well as sleep kicks from Cloud. He'd never witnessed it, but it stood to reason that Cloud might have suffered from sleep walking, giving a dreamy impression of places or situations he would later see in waking life.

It made Sephiroth wonder if he ever did the same thing. Maybe he'd gotten hungry one night and walked in his sleep to the base kitchen, ate something and wandered back to bed. That might provide a reasonable explanation. If that was the case, he hoped he was at least wearing pants at the time.

Sephiroth sat on the counter to swing his legs over to the other side when he noticed an open doorway with a light on inside. There was a hallway that held the offices of the kitchen workers. Safety posters, employee schedules and bulletin boards full of notes were tacked on the walls, and the agonizingly familiar feeling returned.

Sephiroth crept up to the doorway, wondering if he might stumble upon some employees fucking or something equally as scandalous. Instead it was an old woman at a desk, and she was holding her head in her hands. She wasn't upset or crying, but rather taking a moment for personal reflection or was perhaps just resting her eyes. It was an intensely private moment.

Sephiroth tried to sneak away, but she noticed movement at the door. "Hello?"

Busted, he had to shamefully return to the doorway. "I didn't mean to bother you."

"General Sephiroth," The lady acknowledged with surprising military familiarity, and snapped into a salute. "I'm former Lieutenant Irene Nowicki, the Crater Base kitchen manager. Do you want something to eat? We had dinner ready for you and Commander Valentine, but your flight was delayed so we cleaned up. I can make you some- "

"At ease, Lieutenant," Sephiroth begged her, totally embarrassed by this very professional little old lady. She'd clearly been in the Shin-Ra army long before he was even born, and was his least favorite type of person to salute him. His excuse for being there sounded really stupid, so he lied: "I was just taking a look around before the investigation tomorrow. I didn't mean to bother you."

She relaxed a bit, but her stare was intense. "I hope you find the intruder… five civilian workers on my staff died horribly of spinal injuries last week. I know they weren't Turks or SOLDIERs, but they were very decent people. I want to see whoever did it dead."

Sephiroth had read the briefing on the intrusion, but honestly had glossed over the deaths of the kitchen staff. They were civilians who worked in food services at Shin-Ra headquarters, and had been contracted to work at the Crater Base at three month intervals. Sephiroth filed it away in his brain as casualties and nothing more.

Former Lieutenant Nowicki was still staring up at him, expecting answers, and probably wondering what an asshole like General Sephiroth could possibly do to help. Ever since the Rolling Stone cover and the media bullshit that followed, the older people in the Shin-Ra army were a little extra unimpressed with the three young Generals and the direction recruitment was heading. But it had been the President's call to craft a cooler, revamped image for the Shin-Ra army… and Cadet recruitment for the following year was already one of the biggest in history, and definitely the biggest since the war against Wutai came to an end.

But here in this secluded part of the world, with nobody else to turn to, this strong little lady was looking up to Sephiroth for leadership and assurance. "Commander Valentine and I are gonna figure out who did this… we're in the middle of nowhere, so there's nowhere to go without leaving an obvious trail. We'll kill her for what she did. We can eat her if you want."

The old lady's eyes went wide, searching for either humor or seriousness in that statement. Sephiroth bit the side of his mouth in disbelief that he'd just said that... he was becoming a Strife, it was fucking inevitable.

"I... know they said it was a woman who did it," Former Lieutenant Nowicki told him, carefully sidestepping the topic of cannibalism. "But I know that it wasn't a woman. I'm not entirely sure it was a man, either. At least not a fully grown man."

"Why?" Sephiroth asked very professionally.

"The construction team working on the base uses the kitchens here freely; if they don't want to spend money on the food we cook, they can keep their own food caches and make meals for themselves. Usually they all come in here in the morning when we're opening, make some lunch for themselves to grab at noon, write their names on it and store them in the cooler. Whoever broke into the base killed all the kitchen staff they came across and stole at least fifteen lunches. They took the food to the men's restroom to eat, and then left all the garbage behind. I know it wasn't a woman, and it's not somebody concerned with DNA evidence. I kept everything in the freezer for analysis."

Sephiroth was trying to remember all of this to parrot back to Vincent the next day. "Anything else?"

She continued. "Another important fact that I think is being glossed over is what the intruder ate. Peanut butter, lunchmeat, pudding, cheese, chips - does that sound like a meal a Wutainese spy would go after? And what kind of female in her right mind would take that much food to the men's room, and then time to pick out all the vegetables and tear off the crusts to leave behind in the garbage? We're looking for a cross dressing SOLDIER, probably from Midgar, and more boy than man."

"Be available to work with us tomorrow on the investigation," Sephiroth ordered. He knew he was the muscle and the tactical thinker, and felt damn lucky to have found this treasure of a woman to do all the heavy deduction for him.

"I'd be honored," She agreed, but didn't smile or show any pleasure in the recognition. She was real old school Shin-Ra like that.

"Where can I find you in the morning?"

"I'll be serving you breakfast at seven hundred hours," she answered. "We can go over everything in detail that I know afterwards."

"Perfect," Sephiroth turned to leave the room. "Tomorrow morning, Lieutenant."

"Young man," she barked.

He paused and looked over his shoulder, "... Yeah?"

"I know you're hungry and you were sniffing around here for food," She got up from her chair and reached for a hairnet. "Let me make you something to eat."

Sephiroth almost refused, but just couldn't resist tiny, bossy people who insisted upon giving him what he really wanted. And what he really wanted was some cold, leftover pizza, which the former Lieutenant just happened to have in one of the coolers that didn't contain dead bodies.

He took four slices on a paper plate and quickly vacated the kitchens with his prize. He was actually looking forward to the investigation now. He had Nowicki to do the work for him, and he planned on just standing around and agreeing with everything she said.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

The next morning Sephiroth piled pancakes, donuts, bacon, eggs, fruit, and coffee on a tray, totally unconcerned about nutritional content. He needed to develop a layer of protective blubber if he was going to be stuck at the Northern Crater for any length of time.

Sephiroth spotted Vincent sitting at a table alone, a cup of coffee and a single piece of toast in front of him. He was a thin man and he ate like one.

"Here's the plan," Sephiroth announced, dropping down into the seat across from Vincent and placing his tray in such a way to invite Vincent to eat. "We've got a good contact in the kitchen who's gonna show us around today. We get all the info she's got, work it over, figure out where the intruder went, find 'em, kill 'em, and then leave. If we do this right we can get outta here tomorrow."

Vincent didn't look up from his newspaper. "Shhh."

That was an odd reaction, and Sephiroth frowned. "What?"

"You don't make plans," Vincent told him. "I make plans, and you pipe down and act like you're interested in bein' here."

"Let's err towards efficiency, that's all I'm sayin'."

" _Err towards efficiency_ ," Vincent mocked. "You sound like Lazard."

Sephiroth slumped low in his seat, but wasn't too moody to dig into his breakfast. "I'm the muscle. I just wanna kill somebody and go home."

Vincent could only agree. "Yeah me too, but they need to see us here for a few days. Can you manage to pretend you aren't an asshole for a few days?"

Sephiroth made a noise of complaint through a mouthful of pancakes.

Vincent smirked, "Trappin' can be just as much fun as stompin' around and cuttin' someone's head off."

"No shit. I'm a tactical genius, didn't you know?" Sephiroth told him will a full mouth, rattling off what newspapers had called him since he was a teenager.

"Genius?" Vincent huffed. "You're just a lucky little shithead who makes good guesses."

Sephiroth wasn't offended at being written off, and in fact found great pleasure in it. A wide smile spread across his face as he shoved some bacon into his mouth. "So that's what you think of me?"

"To me, you'll always be a crazy little kid," Vincent turned the page of his paper. "A little kid in a big coat playin' war games with his friends."

"Fair enough. But what if I was like, really good at my job?" Sephiroth challenged. "What if I actually like it? And what if I'm actually as smart as they say I am? What then?"

Vincent reached out to take some of his bacon. "Well, if that's the case... I'm awfully proud of ya."

Sephiroth continued to eat with a smile. After a few minutes of his chewing and Vincent's calm page turning, Sephiroth couldn't stand it anymore. "I'm like, kinda proud of you too."

"Don't say anything nice to me 'til I'm dyin'," With more of a taste for food, Vincent helped himself to one of Sephiroth's donuts. "Or better yet, already dead. Say nice shit about me at my funeral."

"I'll try," Sephiroth shoved a section of an apple fritter into his face.

"You know..." Vincent thought aloud, "I only remember my dad sayin' he was proud of me like... once. My mom died in a train derailment, super sudden. I was gonna talk at her funeral, but I couldn't. He said he was proud of me, anyways. That was the only time, I think."

"What were their names?"

"Collette was my mom, and Grimoire's my dad."

"And how'd he die?" Sephiroth asked, stabbing his eggs and jamming them into his mouth.

Vincent sputtered a laugh. "He's not dead."

Sephiroth's eyes shot up. "What? Where is he?"

Vincent thought for a moment before giving Sephiroth an apologetic half shrug, "He's worse than me, Seph. He's not into like... family and shit."

"You're sayin' I can't talk to my grandpa?" Sephiroth clarified. "Or you just don't _want_ me to talk to him?"

"Grandpa," Vincent repeated incredulously, picking up his newspaper to fan his suddenly red face. "Shit. Jesus."

"Hey, if you're embarrassed and ashamed of your adopted son, it's cool," Sephiroth shrugged right back at him. "Family ain't a big deal to me, either. I mean, what the hell? Nobody's gotta give a shit about Sephiroth, I don't have feelings or nothin', I wasn't _created_ with them - "

"You little shithead," Vincent sneered, seeing the manipulation but unable to help falling for it. "When this investigation is through... if you can fuckin' _behave_... I'll call him and tell him you wanna talk. That might actually be the thing that kills him."

"He knows about me?" Sephiroth wondered, his insides going a bit warm that maybe Vincent had spoken of him to someone else.

"Oh yeah," Vincent laughed. " _You_ were what made him quit his job at the medical lab. He couldn't stomach all the genetic experimentation. Broke your mom's heart, he was one of her favorite coworkers."

Sephiroth was silent for a moment, his jaw twitching as he stared directly into Vincent's blood red eyes. Finally, he licked his lips. "What happened to you that made you like this?"

"What?" Vincent asked, genuinely shocked.

"What coulda possibly happened to you, in your middle class, fuckin' upper plate Midgar life, to make you like this?" Sephiroth demanded, his anger funneling his volume down into a dark whisper. "After all I been through, I'm still more fuckin' normal than you. How?"

"Everyone goes through shit, Seph."

"But I wanna know what the fuck happened to _you_ ," Sephiroth didn't raise his voice, but something about his tone seemed monstrously loud. "Why do I gotta ask specific questions to you to get basic fuckin' information? It's like every time we talk I find out shit I shoulda known since I was a kid!"

"Grim Valentine ain't got nothin' to do with _you_ ," Vincent whispered back. "He tried everything to stop you from even bein' conceived. So if he'd stuck around, you wouldn't be here. So be grateful he left."

That felt like a knife right in Sephiroth's heart, and his voice cracked slightly. "So... someone in this fucked up company actually had some sense, some fuckin' basic human morals? And you never thought I'd might wanna know about him, or talk to him?"

"It never occurred to me," was Vincent's answer.

"You're gonna put me in contact with him the minute this bullshit mission is over with."

"You're gonna respect me as the head of this investigation and act accordingly for however long it takes," Vincent responded coolly. "And when it's complete, I'll call him and have him come meet with us in Midgar."

"Us?" Sephiroth shook his head with a barking laugh. "Nobody invited _you_."

"If you can get that miserable old fucker to talk, I'll be impressed. I don't think you're gonna get anything out of him."

"A chance to talk shit about _you_?" Sephiroth pushed four strips of bacon into his mouth at once. "You wanna bet I won't get him to talk?"

Vincent tapped his long fingers against a cigarette pack lying on the table beside his plate. "Not really."

"Thought so."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

After the latest Jenova incident, Rhonda made a copy of Sephiroth's apartment key with his permission. She had taped it securely underneath Sephiroth's mailbox, which was nested unassumingly in a row of twenty boxes downstairs. The General didn't feel vulnerable knowing that she could get into his apartment whenever she felt the need to. If there was anyone in the Shin-Ra army that he trusted with his privacy, it was her.

Nobody else would ever know about the key but the two of them, until there was an occasion where they needed to get into his apartment for safety reasons. Sephiroth felt good about it, especially considering that Cloud would soon move in. If ever there was a reason for him to call Rhonda for help, she would be able to get inside immediately or send whoever was nearby.

The clone approached the mailbox, and after a casual scan of the area to ensure that nobody was watching him, he felt underneath. The key wasn't centered, but taped along the edge where it would never fall free or be felt by accident.

He couldn't believe it when his fingers brushed the tape and the outline of the key. Surely it wouldn't be so easy to break into his own home?

But it was. He planned to tighten security immediately, because if he was a wild Murphy's Law clone that just popped out of nowhere, it stood to reason that there were others. The General was truly comfortable in his bubble where everything was normal, but he was lax in the simple task of protecting himself _from_ himself.

Once inside the loft, the little clone had access to Sephiroth's identity, his computer, his work information, his money, his fucking internet porn history… it was so easy to intrude upon his own life. He knew exactly where Sephiroth was and exactly when he would be coming home.

But most importantly, the clone had access to his medication. A few pills later, Jenova was just a dull tone in the back of his skull.

There wasn't much food in the kitchen, so the clone ordered several pizzas using his own credit card. It was only a small risk, knowing Sephiroth he didn't worry about his bank account all that much, especially away on a mission. And it wasn't even suspicious activity since pizza was the number one, most often purchase.

His usual delivery man seemed confused, but ultimately didn't ask any questions when the adolescent signed for 'his uncle Sephiroth'. It was sort of like being McCauley Culkin in _Home Alone_ , only downside being that he was trapped in the worst role in a really shitty movie forever. He was already impatiently checking for signs of growth in his body, and if memory served him, those changes didn't kick in until age eleven.

Until then, he just enjoyed the empty loft. He dirtied dishes, slept in his bed, wore his own comically large clothing, and just enjoyed rewatching movies he was normally too busy to rewatch.

One lazy, indulgent night he was watching mindless judicial court television and nibbling on some cold garlic knots when he heard a key scratching at the front door.

He'd lost track of the days. The clone realized with a gasp of horror that it was Friday night...

If he was lucky, it was Cloud. If he was unlucky, it was the General home early...

There was an awkward pause after the initial key scratch, giving the clone fractions of a second to turn the TV off and drop the remote. In a red alert panic, he made a clumsy dive over the back of the couch and slid into the narrow space against the wall, garlic knot still in his mouth.

The door swung open and Cloud and his ability to fill a room with noise and commotion stumbled in. "No, no I don't want to hang up, I'm finally here!" There was the rustle of plastic, and then several thunks of bags hitting the floor. "Jesus, Seph! You yell at me about my jizz, but you just leave a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink all week long? This whole place is a mess!"

The clone was damn near hyperventilating, but didn't even dare to breathe. Tenderly, he removed the garlic knot from his mouth and took a bite out of anxiety.

He heard Cloud's footsteps come closer. "There are pizza boxes everywhere! I don't remember it being this much of a mess when we left. Yeah well, you can act innocent all you want, but I'm looking at the evidence…" Cloud paused before giggling. "Shut up…. No, _you_ shut up. I refuse to marry you if you're gonna make me your slave... Well... I guess I wouldn't mind that much..."

Cloud's voice and footsteps trailed down the hall, and the clone peeked around the side of the couch. He got a glimpse of Cloud, only enough to tell that he was wearing his Academy uniform and talking on his phone as he disappeared down the hallway towards the bedroom, but then immediately turned around to return the way he came. The little clone quickly slid back into hiding.

"You're a pig," Cloud broke into a fit of giggling. "Stop talking like that, I'm not gonna see you for another week. Oh? Really? Mm… I've been thinking about making that video all week... I don't really need much inspiration for it..."

The little clone rolled his eyes while silently gagging to himself. If he was going to have to lie there and listen to phone sex he would rather fucking die.

Cloud's voice was a soft purr from the kitchen, "I think I can find something like that at Dirty Rubbers… but right now I'm only wearing my school uniform. What are you wearing? That's so sexy… Yes it is. Your ass looks really good in the First Class pants… I like the way the crotch bunches up when you walk..."

The clone was searching for something, anything to kill himself with. Cloud suddenly plopped down on the couch, his weight putting nearly unbearable pressure on the clone. He could only afford shallow breaths, but found the will to finish his garlic knot. Food was the only comfort he had in the world; if Cloud was going to suffocate him to death, he wasn't going to miss out on his final garlic knot.

Cloud was oblivious as he continued to aggressively bait the General. "Can you send me a picture? Just unzip your pants and… Why not? But, maybe you could just stay quiet and… Oh. Okay, I understand. No it's okay… yeah it's late there. But why do you have your uniform on if you're about to go to bed?"

The clone remembered how fun it was for the General to get Cloud worked up on purpose, and then leave him hanging. He was so relieved that his little kid body couldn't react to the fact that his sort-of lover was inches away and being blue balled by his larger counterpart. As it was, he just found it… nostalgic and sweet and heart breaking.

He wished he'd grabbed more garlic knots.

Cloud couldn't stay mad at whatever Sephiroth was saying to him, so he laughed softly. "Yeah, but it's still not fair… will you make it up to me when you come home? Okay. I'm gonna clean your stinking apartment, now… Alright, call me tomorrow. I love you. Sweet dreams."

Cloud closed his phone, and his weight redistributed as he stretched out on the couch. It took the pressure off the clone, and the two of them laid there, inches apart from each other for a long while.

The little clone had no physical ability or mental willingness to feel sexually attracted to Cloud. It was strange, and it was freeing. But he could hear Cloud's breathing, could smell his cologne, could imagine how warm and nice a hug would feel at that moment in contrast to the cold wooden floor he was trying to disappear into. Cloud gave perfect hugs; long, cuddly tight ones that lasted as long as his hugging partner needed it to.

He became annoyed with himself when he came to the realization that he was fantasizing about a fucking hug. He had to put forth an effort not to snort at his own childishness.

Cloud eventually got up and his light footsteps traveled into the kitchen with the pizza box mess, the clone squirmed to the edge of the couch and peeked around it again. He got a better look at Cloud moving around the tastefully designed kitchen, his earbuds in and humming along to whatever he was listening to.

Cloud was _huge_. In the eyes of a six-year-old, Cloud was a mature, responsible, fully grown man cleaning his boyfriend's kitchen like a fucking adult. Even Cloud's voice sounded much deeper than the clone remembered as he hummed to himself while doing the dishes, every so often singing along strings of words.

Cloud definitely could sing better than he let on, which Sephiroth always assumed. Just like dancing in public, Cloud would rather be silly and make fun of himself than put any real effort into it and be made fun of instead. But alone, Cloud could rock his hips to any beat, and sing along in a smooth, even voice that remained on key.

_I miss him,_ the clone thought to himself before he could help it.

He reminded himself that Cloud didn't love him. Cloud loved _Sephiroth_ , and the clone was not Sephiroth. He'd had enough time to make peace with that truth. His heart rate slowed as he began to make a very serious series of decisions about himself, Cloud, and his space in the scheme of things.

With Sephiroth out of the way, he could take a hold of his life. He could take time in figuring out how to be permanently rid of Jenova. He could grow up. He'd meet someone new. He had the chance to live his life all over again. He couldn't do it without hurting Cloud, so the best thing would be to take all the hurt away at once.

He slid out from behind the couch, and stood in the living room. He was frozen, waited for Cloud to notice him, and in the moment of that shock and surprise, the clone would attack.

It would be quick, and totally painless for Cloud.

Cloud didn't belong in this army, this shitty electric company, or this fucked up city. He would be dead and in the Lifestream where he belonged. That was the safest place Cloud could possibly be. He'd always be young, and happy, and gorgeous. Sephiroth would be there soon, too.

It was the right thing to do, and it would be so _easy_. Just like the boys in the playground. His slim neck and bones breaking would feel just like theirs did. It'd be over in a moment.

The loft would be quiet again. It was always quiet before Cloud showed up in their life.

At the sink, Cloud jumped when he heard a loud, thumping bang. He pulled out his earbuds while glancing around the empty kitchen, and then peeked into the living room beyond that.

Cloud was slightly withered with dread, "... Hello?"

No reply.

Cloud regained his height and squared his shoulders, "Alright. We always knew it would come to this... if there are any ghosts here, now is _not_ the time to make your presence known. I'm innocent! I'm too easy of a target! Wait until Sephiroth comes home and go after _him_!"

Again no reply, so Cloud figured he'd pacified any angry spirits. He put his earbuds back in and returned to work on the sink full of filthy dishes.

From across the loft, inside the closet of an unfinished room, the clone decided to take Cloud's advice. He'd wait until Sephiroth came home, and take care of business then.

Cloud could live with it, or not. It'd be his choice. The clone hoped Cloud would want to stick around, though... as long as Cloud was around, it was never quiet. The clone liked that.

A/N

1 - Hello! Thanks for all your awesome reviews and encouragement during another long bout of hiatus with this story. It's been very difficult forming this chapter, because my heart just can't take it. I'm a bad person who writes bad things, and then I feel miserable about it until I go back and turn it all into gratuitous sex and garlic knots.

2 - As always, I hope the length makes up for the wait. I really don't mean to take as long as I do between chapters, I'm just busy like everyone else is. Hopefully this is just a squishy little story where you can come when you want, reread things to catch up, and enjoy new content when I'm able to give it to you.

3 - I can't project exactly when the next chapter will be out, but there will always be more. So no worries about me giving up anytime soon, haha.


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